Guwahati News Desk: With 10 more people testing positive for the Zika virus in Kanpur city, the total tally of the mosquito-borne disease in the Uttar Pradesh district has reached 89. On Saturday, 13 people had tested positive for the deadly virus.
Health teams had collected 525 blood samples from people on Thursday to Saturday and later sent them to the virology lab of the King George’s Medical University in Lucknow and the National Institute of Virology in Pune for testing.
Of these collected samples, 23 of them tested positive for the Zika virus, conveyed the District Magistrate.
Out of the 89 infected people, 55 are men and 34 are women. 23 of them are those having age below 21 years. And out of the total infected persons, 12 are Indian Air Force personnel. This includes 11 men and one woman, The district magistrate further added in his Statement.
On October 23, the first case of the virus was reported in the city when a warrant officer of the IAF tested positive for the virus. So far, a total of 3,283 samples have been collected from the city and sent to the virology lab of KGMU in Lucknow and NIV in Pune for testing.
On Saturday, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath released detailed guidelines on the spread of the Zika virus in the state. The CM had also earlier instructed officials to speed up sanitization work as the Zika virus cases spread.
According to report by Time 8, Assam has been on alarm after Zika virus outbreak in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. All district health authorities are directed by the state health department to test suspected Zika-infected people who have arrived from places where the virus infection has raised alarm in the country.
As per reports, Assam has formed a committee to monitor Zika infection, wherever new cases of Zika have been found, new instruction will be issued to test more people for suspected infections.