PM Modi to chair meeting on Covid-19 situation in Varanasi today

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday will chair a meeting to review the Covid-19 situation in Varanasi, the PM's office said.

"The meeting will be attended by top officials, local administration and doctors who are involved in fighting Covid in Varanasi," it added. PM Modi represents Varanasi in the parliament.

Restrictions in state

The Varanasi district administration has decided to impose a weekend curfew in the district starting 10 pm on Friday till Monday morning to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

This is in addition to a Sunday lockdown that the state administration has imposed across Uttar Pradesh.

The Uttar Pradesh government on Thursday extended the night curfew hours in districts seeing a spike in infections.

The UP government has extended the night curfew timings from 8 pm to 7 am in districts with over 2,000 active Covid-19 cases. These include Noida, Lucknow, Varanasi, Prayagraj, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Kanpur Nagar and Gorakhpur.

Schools in Uttar Pradesh will also remain closed till 15 May. The board exams for classes 10 and 12 students have been postponed till 20 May.

Cases in Uttar Pradesh

The state on Saturday reported 120 deaths, its largest one-day toll due to the disease, pushing the fatality count to 9,703, while 27,357 fresh Covid-19 cases raised the infection tally to 8,21,054, according to an official statement.

Of the new fatalities linked to the virus, 36 were reported from state capital Lucknow, followed by 15 from Kanpur, eight from Varanasi, four each from Moradabad, Muzaffarnagar and Jaunpur among other districts.

Lucknow accounted for 5,913 of the fresh Covid-19 cases, Allahabad 1977, Kanpur 1826 and Varanasi 1,664, the UP government said in a statement issued here.

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