Covid-19: Migrants account for 70% of new UP cases

LUCKNOW/ BENGALURU: Both Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka are seeing a surge in

fresh Covid-19 cases

fuelled by

returnees

to the states.


With approximately 20 lakh migrant workers having returned to UP in one and half months, it is going through, what

health officials

called, a ‘fourth Covid surge’. They said that about 70% of the cases being reported in the state in the past two weeks involve

migrants

.


What presses alarm bells is that the case positivity rate among symptomatic migrants was as high as 22%. “Over 4.75 lakh migrant workers quarantined at home have been surveyed by ASHA workers. In all, they screened 565 persons with symptoms who were tested for covid-19. The lab reports of 117 is out and it revealed that 26 tested positive while the remaining 91 were found negative.


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This suggests that the positivity rate among migrants was 22.2% which is several folds higher when compared with the corresponding figure of 2.6% for UP,” said principal secretary health and family welfare Amit Mohan Prasad.


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In Karnataka, of the 897 individuals who tested positive in the first 20 days of this month, 433, or 48%, had returned from other states.

Among the returnees who tested positive, 322 came from Maharashtra, 59 from Gujarat and 31 from Rajasthan. The rest came from other states.