Eastern UP districts see spurt in coronavirus cases amid migrants return

Several eastern Uttar Pradesh districts have witnessed a spurt in cases of coronavirus infection amid the return of migrant workers with Barabanki emerging as a new COVID-19 hotspot after detection of 95 new cases there in a single day.

Barabanki District Magistrate Aadarsh Kumar said on Wednesday that of the 245 samples sent for testing on May 15-16, 95 have been found corona positive.

Among those who tested positive, 49 are migrants who had recently returned from other states, the DM said, adding all have been admitted to hospital as per the COVID-19 treatment protocol.

The remaining 46 are those who had come in contact with six infected persons and had been kept in isolation, the DM said.

With this, the total number of active cases in the district has gone up to 122, the DM added.

Earlier on Tuesday, 50 migrants had tested positive in Basti district.

According to Basti DM Ashutosh Niranjan, 50 new cases came to light on Tuesday with all of them being migrant workers who had returned recently from other states.

Pratapgarh reported 10 new cases and Ghazipur 18 on Wednesday.

On Thursday, 15 cases were reported in Azamgarh with DM N P Singh saying that the graph of coronavirus infection has gone up with the return of migrants from other states.

In Siddhartnagar , 11 new cases were reported on Thursday with most them being migrants having returned from Mumbai, Chief Medical Officer, Dr Seema Rai said.

Another 16 cases were reported from Jaunpur of which 15 had come back from Mumbai and one from Surat, District Magistrate Dinesh Kumar Singh said.

Eight migrant workers who had returned from Maharashtra and Gujarat were tested positive in Maharajganj, DM Dr Ujjawl Kumar said.

State's principal secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad had on Tuesday said that a high incidence of infections being observed among migrant workers returning to Uttar Pradesh and village and 'mohalla' monitoring committees have been asked to be on vigil.