UP plans one Covid testing device per district, aims at 20,000 tests a day

Aiming to double the testing capacity to 20,000 a day by the month-end, the Uttar Pradesh government has deployed the state aircraft to fetch the modern TrueNat machine for prompter Covid-19 sample testing.

The state is working to providing a TrueNat machine to each of the 75 districts, while 20 such machines had already been deployed in as many districts.

“Now, 21 TrueNat machines have been brought by the state plane and these will be dispatched to the respective districts tomorrow,” UP medical and health principal secretary Amit Mohan Prasad said here this evening.

He said the remaining 34 machines will be brought over the next 3-4 days so that all 75 districts get one TrueNat machine each for Covid-19 sample testing.

UP additional chief secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi said the machines had been brought from Mumbai by the state plane and the aircraft will ferry them to their destination in the state as well.

“These machines will expand our sample testing capacity and provide confirmation results much faster,” he added.

So far, the daily sample testing count in UP stands at 10,000, which is targetted to the ramped up to 15,000 by June 15 and to 20,000 by the month-end.

Besides, the state has expanded the Covid beds count to 100,000 to deal with any eventuality. These beds have been arranged in the level 1, 2 and 3 Covid hospitals, although the government has estimated that going by the current rate of infection, UP would not need such large provisioning for patients and suspect cases.

“Now, our focus is more on the qualitative aspect of Covid care, including medical supplies, training etc to fight the pandemic,” Prasad had said.

At present, nearly 3,000 patients are recuperating in the different isolation wards, while nearly 9,000 people are lodged in the facility quarantine, which includes suspects or contacts of Covid-19 positive cases.

So far, UP has reported a total of 8,191 coronavirus cases across 75 districts, of which 4,891 have been discharged, while 217 patients succumbed to the infection, thus leaving 3,083 active cases.

Meanwhile, the ASHA (accredited social health activist) workers have surveyed 1.15 million migrants and reported 1,027 suspect cases to the state medical department for testing.

Besides, more than 100,000 health department teams had surveyed and screened 39.7 million people in the containment and non-containment zones for sample collection and identification of suspect cases.

Further, the state has speeded up the process of distribution of food grain under the public distribution system (PDS) with the number of ration card holders standing at 35 million in UP. The ration shop owners have been warned against under any weighing in ration distribution since a first information report (FIR) will be lodged in such cases.