Coronavirus: School Buildings, Private Hospitals to Be Used for Quarantine in UP

Lucknow: The Yogi Adityanath-led BJP government in Uttar Pradesh will rope in private hospitals, schools and educational institutions to establish quarantine facilities. Adityanath has also urged citizens to stay wherever they are and not to embark on pedestrian journeys in any case, ensuring them of all help.

“People who have come from other states to UP and residents of UP who are working in others should contribute to the respective state government and not embark on pedestrian journey risking their health and safety," he said. "We should follow the guidelines issued to combat the coronavirus, I would appeal to everyone to stay wherever they are without any panic.”

Adityanath said the UP government has appointed nodal officers for all states who are working round the clock.

"In UP we have decided any kind of irrelevant movement will be restricted and people will be given all the faclities wherever they are," he said. "Hospitals are also prepared and those coming from outside the state are being given shelter at different schools and all the food and health facilities are also being provided."

UP Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Awasthi said the number of isolation beds in UP has been increased to 15,000 and eight laboratories are working to conduct tests — a ninth laboratory will be soon functional in Jhansi district.

1,500 buses deployed

Meanwhile, the Ghaziabad district administration has deployed 1,500 buses to take migrant workers who returned from Delhi and Bihar due to the coronavirus lockdown to their native districts where they will be checked for COVID-19 symptoms, said a senior official.

District Magistrate Ajay Shankar Pandey said all the migrants who had arrived here have been sent to their native districts.

"As many as 1,500 buses were pressed into service after sanitisation. Around 2,000 workers had gathered at Laal Kuan this morning. They were also facilitated to go back to their homes, that too without any cost," he said.

Authorities of all those districts have been informed so that a medical checkup of the migrants may be conducted when they alight from the buses. Any person showing symptoms would be sent to hospital.

The Centre has ordered a 14-day quarantine of all migrant workers who travelled after violating the lockdown which has been imposed to check the spread of coronavirus.

(With inputs from PTI)