Covid-19 crisis: Uttar Pradesh sees decline in cases, but rural spread cause of concern

After witnessing a continuous rise, Uttar Pradesh has recorded a decline in the number of Covid cases, especially in the bigger towns. However, the suspected spread of the infection in rural areas has set alarm bells ringing in the government.

After reaching a high of over 35,000 cases per day, the state reported 20,463 cases in the past 24 hours. As many as 306 people died from Covid in the same period, taking the total number of deaths to 16,043.

However, reports of deaths of people with Covid-like symptoms in the rural areas have become a cause of major concern in the state, as there are few testing and treatment facilities in the villages, smaller towns and districts.

There are reports that scores of people with complaints of cough and cold, fever and breathlessness have died at several villages in the eastern, central and western districts in the state.

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Reports of deaths have come in from Ghazipur, Deoria, Ballia, Sultanpur, Sonebhadra, Hapur and many other districts in the state in the past few days.

Over 70 people reportedly died in four villages of Andila, Baida, Kheda and Sauram villages in Deoria, Sultanpur and Ghazipur districts alone in the past few days.

Since hardly a few of them had been tested, the officials found it very easy to deny that they had died from Covid 19.

''Many people are dying for want of testing and treatment...It takes several days (at times one week) to get results of the RT-PCR tests... many patients either die in the meantime or become critical by the time they reach the hospitals,'' said a local journalist in Deoria.

A health official in Deoria admitted that they often ran short of testing kits. He also said during the door-to-door survey, they only measure the SPO2 level and temperature.

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Sources in the health department say the number of cases will rise substantially if more people from the rural areas are tested.

Samajwadi Party (SP) supremo and former UP chief minister, Akhilesh Yadav, said the BJP government had failed miserably to control the surge of Covid in the villages. ''People's lives in the villages are in danger for want of medicines and oxygen... lies can not hide the deaths,'' Akhilesh said.

The UP government was lambasted by the Allahabad High Court over its alleged 'mismanagement' of the situation. The court termed the deaths as 'genocide' and rapped the Election Commission (EC) for not postponing the panchayat polls.

Even BJP lawmakers attacked Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath for not being able to effectively tackle the pandemic and failing to ensure uninterrupted supply of oxygen and Remdesivir. As many as four BJP legislators have died from Covid-19 in the past few days.

''We have been able to manage the situation well... the number of cases is coming down.... our efforts have yielded positive results,'' claimed state health minister Jai Pratap Singh.