Lucknow : With more than 240, 000, 000 citizens, Uttar Pradesh, the most densely populated state in India has risen to its unique challenges to overcome the COVID-19 situation which has gripped the entire world today. The state has demonstrated strong leadership, effective governance, and commitment, throughout this pandemic, and led by example.
Early detection and isolation of potentially infectious individuals are the keys to successfully fighting a viral pandemic. Recognizing which the Yogi-led government in Uttar Pradesh effectively implemented and intensified the stringent ‘Trace-Test-Treat’ mechanism throughout the state.
Despite registering a steady decline in the number of fresh infections, Uttar Pradesh has been testing more than 2 lakh samples regularly which is nearly ten times more than the prescribed testing protocol for the state by the global health body World Health Organization.
The testing protocol by the WHO for Uttar Pradesh is 32,000 tests per day, whereas the Covid testing in the state has hovered between 150,000 and 200,000 of late.
Uttar Pradesh has come a long way from getting the first Covid test conducted from the lab at National Institute of Virology, Pune in 2020 to crossing the milestone of 7 crore tests today. As many as 7,10,73,105 samples have been tested so far that testifies the enlarged testing capacity in the state.
Following the guidelines issued by the World Health Organization, Uttar Pradesh adopted a master strategy of tracing, testing and treating the covid patients to reach the last mile within the state. On the scale of testing samples per positive case, 6.4 tests per positive case were conducted in Maharashtra, 11.5 in Karnataka, 8 in Kerala, 14 in Delhi, 12.8 in Tamil Nadu and 11.4 tests per positive case in Andhra Pradesh, whereas Uttar Pradesh has been able to test 41.6 samples per positive case and is leading by example.
Importantly, the state government prioritized active surveillance while simultaneously building the health system capacity. It tapped into real-time information for early identification, breaking the disease transmission, and training public health authorities to undertake effective contact tracing. The state conducted house-to-house surveillance to detect all influenza like illness (ILI), tracked migrants consistently, and introduced pooled sampling, amongst other critical measures to strengthen the WHO-recommended ‘trace-test-treat’ strategy.
Testing is the backbone for curbing the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 as it helps timely detection of cases and their isolation and contact tracing. A widely deployed and efficient testing strategy in Uttar Pradesh has helped in limiting the spread of new cases as it significantly reduced the chance of individuals with undetected virus exposure from roaming freely among unexposed individuals.
In a significant development, with productive functioning of both Government and Private Laboratories, the state has also ramped up its Covid Testing Capacity from 1 lakh RT PCR tests per day to 1.5 lakh or more RT PCR tests per day in a span of few days.
Out of over 1.87 lakh samples tested in the last 24 hours, Uttar Pradesh recorded 22 fresh COVID-19 cases, with positivity rate down to 0.01 per cent testifying success of numerous proactive measures adopted by the state government in limiting the transmission of the virus in the densely populated state.
The Yogi-led state has also been registering a steep decline in the number of Active Covid Cases as the figure has dropped from a high of 3,10,783 in April to 345 now, a remarkable reduction by 99 percent.
*Door-to-door screening in rural areas by surveillance committees*
The surveillance committees constituted by the UP government have been working round the clock true to the spirit of ‘trace, test and treat’ in rural areas.
More than 73000 Surveillance Committees constituted by the Yogi government are moving across 97,941 villages in all 75 districts for this activity, which began on 5 May, and has been extended to cover 100 percent rural households.
The 70 percent of tests since the second wave surge of Covid-19 cases in the state have solely been conducted in the rural regions.
In addition, to spread awareness regarding the importance of early detection and early treatment, the surveillance committees have also been visiting houses in rural areas to educate the rural population and have been repeatedly appealing to not hide the symptoms and rather get themselves tested.
