Uttar Pradesh: state governance and response in COVID-19 pandemic

Since January 30, there has been a surge in novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) outbreak cases in almost all parts of the world except very few countries were able to restraint it with proactive measures. Last year, Uttar Pradesh recorded its first case of COVID-19 on March 4, 2020, in Ghaziabad. Despite having population of over 240 million and high population density as well as the low literacy levels in the state of Uttar Pradesh, the state government was able to deal with the adjoining risk with recovery rate of about 85.34% in the state. The preventive measures against coronavirus outbreak started in the first week of March 2020. There have been reports of total cases of about 384,856 with about 52,160 active cases. While till end of September 2020, 336,981 COVID-19 patients had recovered. Various risk governance strategies and inclusion of modern technologies paved the way for better and efficient public health emergency management of COVID-19 pandemic, effort being made by State government to scale up the team up to 1 lakh for effective surveillance on COVID-19. UP Directorate General of Medical and Health services demarcated the health facilities as L1, L1 Covid Care Center, L2, and L3 throughout the state for treatment, depending on their capacity and beds availability. Special training programs designed especially for frontline workers like medical professionals, police personnel, Panchayati Raj, and the rural and urban development departments, together other line department, were carried out at an early stage. There are more than 3962 community kitchens running across the state that are catering to over 3.57 lakhs beneficiaries with a total of expenses of around 898,963 USD from Relief Commissioner office. The Labor Department has been tracking the migrated population. State government has launched various schemes, programmes, and food supply to support low-income groups, MGNREGA cards holders, workers, and small wage earners. The four-step action plan that includes Integrated Command and Control Centers (ICCC), door-to-door survey, weekend lockdown for sanitization, and COVID help-desk at all government offices were effective part of risk governance strategies.