Lucknow, May 14: The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has claimed that the state has managed to flatten the COVID-19 curve and limit the transmission of the deadly virus.

"The COVID-19 situation in Uttar Pradesh has witnessed a significant improvement as the number of active cases has drastically been reduced by nearly 1.06 lakh in the last 12 days with a swift recovery of COVID-19 patients even in home isolation," said an official statement issued by the state information department.  WHO Acknowledges UP Government's Initiative of House-to-House Active COVID-19 Case Finding and Tracing in Rural Areas to Contain Virus

The statement further said that the number of active COVID-19 cases in the state has now dropped to nearly 2.04 lakh.

With the aggressive approach against COVID-19 as part of the 'test, trace and treat' strategy, the state has conducted more than 43 million COVID-19 tests, the statement added.

While the influx of COVID-19 cases has been declining for the past few days, the test-positivity rate has stayed below 10 per cent in Uttar Pradesh for the fourth consecutive day and came down to nearly 7 per cent on Thursday - a fall of nearly 10 percentage point from the high of 16.84 per cent on April 24.

The test positivity rate, which is the number of positive cases against the total tests done, reflects the infection rate and how fast the virus is spreading.

About a fortnight ago, when the cases had shown a slight dip for a few days, the test-positivity rate had remained high as there was a corresponding drop in the number of tests.

This time, however, there has been no corresponding decline in testing, and as a result, the decline in new cases has led to a drop in the infection rate.

The number of fatalities, however, remains a matter of concern. In the past 24 hours, at least 281 COVID-19-related deaths were reported. While 35 patients died in Lucknow, 16 deaths have been reported in Kanpur Nagar and 15 in Meerut, according to the state Health Department's bulletin.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on May 14, 2021 03:46 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).