Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy stated that his government would spend Rs 1,000 crore, in the next six months, towards Covid-19 medical care.
As of now, the state is spending about Rs 6.5 crore every day towards Covid-19 expenses, Rs five crore of it for conducting tests and Rs 1.5 crore for treatment, food, sanitation etc., at the quarantine facilities.
The state has till Friday morning conducted 15,41,993 Covid-19 tests, with 28,876 tests on average per a million population. It has registered 80,858 positive cases, with a positivity rate of 5.24 percent; 39,990 of them are active cases.
The state has been adding new cases in shocking numbers from the last few days. While there were 7,998 fresh cases on Thursday, it was 8,147 on Friday.
On Friday, when the state’s Covid-19 related death toll stood at 933, Reddy held a review meeting with the health officials on the pandemic situation. He approved an action plan to recruit the doctors, paramedical staff required for the next six months, on a large scale.
According to officials, the CM directed for addition of 54 more hospitals to take the total number of Covid-19 treatment hospitals in the state to 138, which would altogether provide 39,051 beds, 4,300 of them in ICU.
Besides, five more critical care hospitals are being set up to offer 2,380 beds.
“Asking us not to spare any expense in Covid-19 treatment, the CM suggested stocking of high-end Remdesivir and Tocilizumab like anti-viral drugs, which cost about Rs 35,000 per course, to save lives of the critically ill patients,” officials said.
Senior health administrators are attributing the high number of positive cases reported lately to the over 50,000 tests they are conducting daily across the state, “with 90 percent of these screenings concentrated in the containment zones and on high-risk individuals.”
“The large incidence of cases would continue like this for some more days and then decline,” officials say.