Agra, the new Uttar Pradesh corona epicentre

With annaddition of 39 new cases, Agra has recorded the highest single day hike in the number of corona patients and emerged as the epicenter of the Covid-19 outbreak in Uttar Pradesh. The total number of cases in the district is now 142.

Out of the 39 positive cases confirmed in Agra on Monday, 14 are from direct contacts of a Fatehpur Sikri-based tourist guide who had tested positive in Mathura on April 10. Five cases are related to staffers of a private hospital and their family members while another five are related to the family members of the patients of a private clinic where a doctor had also tested positive last week.

The remaining are contacts of people who tested positive earlier, including those who had attended the Tablighi Jamaat event in Delhi`s Nizamuddin Markaz in March.

Among the new patients in the district is a junior doctor who had been serving at the isolation ward of SN Medical College (SNMC).

With the rising numbers, the local administration has shifted 20 patients to similar facilities in the neighbouring districts. While 10 patients were earlier shifted to Vrindavan community health centre (CHC), another 10 were shifted to Bhogaon CHC in Mainpuri on Monday.

The neighbouring Kasganj district, for the first time, reported presence of coronavirus infection, as three residents tested positive.

In Ferozabad, the cases rose to 18, as two fresh cases were found positive.

With 14 new cases surfacing in one day, Fatehpur Sikri has also emerged as a major hotspot in the district. The two major hotspots in the city include a private hospital having 21 positive cases linked to it and a clinic in the Ghatiya Azam Khan locality with 10 cases linked to it.

A staff nurse of a private hospital in Mathura tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday, taking the tally of patients in the district to five.

According to Chief Medical Officer Mukesh Kumar Vats, areas where these new patients lived have been sealed and the residents were being screened.

"It is very unfortunate that one junior doctor has got Covid-19. We will be sending samples of all the doctors and paramedic staff serving at the isolation ward for testing," he said.

Agra District Magistrate Prabhu Narain Singh said: "The number of active cases in the district is 142. All the people who had come in contact with any corona patient are being screened. The area in the vicinity of the places where the infected people were staying is being sanitized.

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"So far, we had marked 49 places in the district as Covid-19 epicenters. Out of these, 10 have been neutralized. We are doing a massive sampling to identify all the infected patients and send them to institutional quarantine."