Union Home, Health Secretaries to hold meetings with Chhattisgarh, UP govt officials over COVID measures

Amid a sharp rise in the COVID-19 cases in Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh, Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla, along with Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan, will hold two different meetings with the government officials of the two states to discuss COVID measures.

Meanwhile, on the instructions of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, a team of Defence Research and Development Orgsation (DRDO) will be reaching Lucknow today, which will build a COVID Hospital with a capacity of 250-300 beds and about 500-600 beds at two places. This work will be carried out in a mission mode in the next few days.

According to the Union Health Ministry, Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh are among the ten states that have shown a rise in the COVID new cases daily.

Both the states reported 22,339 and 15,256 new CVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours respectively, said the ministry on Friday.

As per the ministry, While Chhattisgarh recorded the second-highest COVID deaths in the last 24 hours at 135, Uttar Pradesh reported 104 deaths.

India reported its highest-ever single-day spike in COVID-19 cases with over 2.17 lakh new cases and more than 1,100 deaths in the last 24 hours, according to the Union Health Ministry on Friday.

In the last 24 hours, 1,185 COVID-related deaths were reported in the country taking the death toll to 1,74,308. As many as 2,17,353 new COVID-19 cases have been reported in India in the last 24 hours. With this, the total number of cases has gone up to 1,42,91,917.

The active number of cases stands at 15,69,743.

In the last 24 hours, 1,18,302 people recovered from the disease. With this, the total recoveries reached 1,25,47,866.

( With inputs from ANI )