Combating a possible hike in COVID cases, UP health dept. conducts mock drills at hospitals

Amid the spike in COVID cases in several countries, the Union government released a precautionary advisory for all states and Union Territories. Following the advisory, a special mock drill was conducted at 400 COVID hospitals across Uttar Pradesh.

The idea behind exercise is to assess the preparedness of health facilities to deal with any possible hike in COVID cases.

Countries like China, Japan, and the US have been witnessing a rampant spike in cases, contributed mostly by BF.7 variant. The BF.7 is a sub-lineage of the Omicron variant BA.5 and is known to be a highly transmissible variant. Compared to other variants, it also has a shorter incubation period with a higher capacity to cause re-infection. Notably, it can even infect vaccinated individuals.

So far, four cases of the BF.7 variant have been reported in India, two each from Gujarat and Odisha. The Uttar Pradesh health authorities have actively started implementing precautionary measures. In light of this, the COVID management framework, the capacity of isolation beds, availability of oxygen/ICU, and ventilators were inspected at the health facilities.

Additionally, medical, paramedical, and nursing staff were also given training, onboarding them with proper SoP in case of COVID emergency. To name a few, Balrampur hospital in Lucknow, 11 hospitals in Varanasi, SN medical college in Agra, and eight hospitals in Prayagraj among others conducted the mock drill.

Moreover, the state government has also asked the citizens to comply with all the COVID guidelines, including wearing masks and maintaining social distancing.

As per the reports, two new COVID cases were reported in Uttar Pradesh in the last 24 hours, taking the state's total active case count to 50. One of the patients was from Noida and the other was from Kanpur.

Meanwhile, four patients were reported to have recovered from the disease. Out of the 50 active cases, three cases are from Lucknow, and the remaining others are from Meerut, Kushinagar, Rae Bareli, Ambedkar Nagar, Noida, Ghaziabad, and Amroha.