The Agra Police have registered an FIR against the management of a private hospital here for not revealing the real number of patients and staff in the hospital after a woman who was taking treatment there had tested positive for coronavirus.

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The hospital's negligence has resulted in spreading the coronavirus to other places, the district administration has said. A local woman was undergoing treatment at Agra's Paras Hospital before she was referred to a hospital in Mathura where she was found positive for coronavirus. Subsequently, the district administration declared Paras hospital as a hotspot and sealed it on the intervening night of April 6-7, the FIR said.

It said that the hospital management underreported the actual number of people including patients, their attendants and the hospital staff. When the authorities took out the people to isolate them, there were 220 people, as against 73 reported by the hospital, the FIR noted. It said that the hospital management's irresponsible act resulted in the spread of COVID-19 to other districts with the movement of the infected attendants/hospital staff.

The police then registered a case in the matter under Sections 188, 269, 270 and 271 of India Penal Code (IPC). Meanwhile, with 78 new positive cases reported on April 16, the total number of COVID-19 cases in Uttar Pradesh reached 805, according to the state Health Department.

According to the bulletin issued by the Directorate of Health Services on April 16, 17 patients were declared recovered and discharged taking the total number to 74. A total of 13 deaths have been reported across various districts of Uttar Pradesh till April 16.