Lucknow, Jul 23 (IANS): The Uttar Pradesh government is launching a targeted sampling drive for Covid-19 from Friday in areas that had reported high caseload during the first and second waves of the pandemic.

The aim of this exercise is to check the third wave of the pandemic in the state capital.

Manoj Agrawal, the new Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Lucknow, said that the city has been divided into 24 sectors for the drive.

In each sector, 70 rapid response teams will screen the population and do sampling of suspected cases.

If any person in these sectors or those arriving from other states is found to be positive, his/her sample will also be sent for genome sequencing.

A testing drive is already underway at the airport and railway and bus stations to test people arriving from other states.

According to the health department, over 2.38 lakh Covid-19 cases have been reported in Lucknow since the outbreak on March 11 last year.

Of these, nearly 41 per cent infections came from areas including Aliganj, Chinhat, Alambagh, N K Road, Sarojini Nagar Chowk, Kaiserbagh, Aishbagh and other Old City areas.

The CMO said that the targeted sampling will help in identifying transmission at an early stage and prevent people from passing the infection to others.

It will also help in finding out any new variant.