Covid-19: UP moots ordinance to deal with cases of attacks on doctors, cops

Under the central ordinance to amend the Act, the attack on a health workers is a cognisable and non-bailable offence.

Days after the Centre brought an ordinance providing for an imprisonment of up to seven years for those attacking Covid-19 health workers, the Uttar Pradesh government on Wednesday mooted a similar legislation with respect to the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897.

In the past four to five weeks, the state has seen several instances of individual and mob attacks on doctors, health workers and police personnel on Covid-19 prevention duty.

Even as the Yogi Adityanath-led UP government had earlier announced it would deal with a firm hand in such cases, including with the slapping of the National Security Act (NSA) against those found guilty, the state has now decided to take a route similar to the Centre’s.

“The ordinance to amend the Act is aimed at ensuring strict punishment to those attacking the health staff and police personnel, while also boosting the morale of the doctors and the corona warriors deployed in frontline duty for Covid-19,” UP Additional Chief Secretary Awanish Kumar Awasthi told the media.

Awasthi said the chief minister had issued instructions to urgently bring an ordinance to this effect and provide adequate security to Covid-19 warriors.

According to the central ordinance for amending the Act, the attack on health workers is to be considered a cognizable and non-bailable offence.

The UP Police have so far lodged more than 33,000 first information reports (FIRs), against 94,000 persons, under Section 188 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), for defying the lockdown orders pertaining to the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897.

Additionally, over 30,000 vehicles have been seized and Rs 13.18 crore has been collected as fine from offenders, Awasthi informed.

Meanwhile, the Adityanath government has decided to increase the number of beds in Covid-19 facilities to 52,000 across Level-I, -II and -III hospitals. These beds would be managed by the state health and medical education departments to deal with any eventuality going forward, especially against the backdrop of expected graded lifting of lockdown after May 3. At present, the number of Covid-19 hospitals across the three levels stands at 155, 78 and 6, respectively.

So far, UP has reported 2,115 coronavirus cases across 60 districts. Of these, 1,602 are active cases, 477 have been discharged, and 36 patients have died.

The state is also expanding the ambit of sample and pool testing. A total of 4,071 samples were tested across UP on Tuesday. Besides, 332 pools, comprising 1,612 samples were also tested. Of those, 15 pools were found to be positive.

“We are now stressing upon smart sampling rather than speed to maintain the quality of our samples for Covid-19 testing,” UP Principal Secretary for medical, health and family welfare Amit Mohan Prasad said.