AGRA: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday visited AMU’s Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College to review the prevailing Covid-19 situation in the varsity where deaths of several staff members, including 16 serving, 10 retired faculty and several non-teaching staff have been reported. The university has already sent the virus samples to ICMR to assess possibilities of any new variant in Aligarh.
Vice-chancellor of the university, Tariq Mansoor, told TOI that the CM assured all possible help in the fight against Covid-19, especially with supply of life-saving drugs, including Remdesivir and Oxygen supply.
The CM said, “Vaccination could have saved lives. The VC raised the demand for additional oxygen, which has been provided.”
A government spokesperson said, oxygen and medicines have been dispatched and the university brass has been promised every possible assistance in handling the situation. The CM also reviewed the vaccination programme and visited the integrated command and control centre, he said.
The AMU VC told TOI, “Though we have an eight-bed paediatric ICU and high dependency unit (HDU) each, CM Yogi has asked us to expand it in view of a possible third wave which could be harmful for children.”
During a meeting with the CM, the VC said that many of the faculty members and non-teaching staff, who died due to Covid-19, were not vaccinated and were hospitalized late. He also said there could be possibilities of a new strain of the virus in Aligarh too. The VC said, “Vaccination is very important and I have been urging all staff members to get vaccinated first.”
Alarmed by the death of a large number of faculty members, retired professors and non-teaching staff due to Covid, the VC had written a letter to the ICMR on May 9 for urgent genome sampling of the virus samples from their lab to check for mutations. However, the report is still awaited.
This was the CM’s first visit to the varsity since he assumed office in 2017. In fact, the last UP chief minister who visited the AMU was ND Tiwari in 1984, said university spokesperson Dr Rahat Abrar.
The CM also held a virtual meeting with district officials of Aligarh, Etah, Kasganj and Hathras to review the Covid-19 situation. While addressing media persons, the CM said, “The cases have declined in the past 12 days across the state.” He added, “Shortfall of oxygen supply was the result of a sudden rise in daily consumption from 300 metric tonnes to 1,000 metric tonnes.”
Divisional commissioner Guarav Dayal, who was also present in the meeting, said that the CM also interacted with the district magistrates of neighbouring districts and directed them to increase testing, set up more oxygen plants and create paediatric ICUs in each district.
“At least 5,000 samples are being tested in the district daily but the CM has asked to increase the numbers to 7,500,” said Aligarh district magistrate CB Singh, adding that they have also been asked to hold virtual meetings with public representatives.
After the review meeting in AMU, the CM visited Mathura and Agra too, where he took stock of the situation and also interacted with Covid positive patients to know their health status and assess the situation in hospitals.
