COVID-19 : How Andhra Pradesh cases shot up from 21 to 252 in seven days

Andhra Pradesh had just 21 positive coronavirus cases at the beginning of last week – Sunday, 29 March. Exactly a week later on Sunday, 5 April, the state is grappling with 252 cases – an alarming rise of 231 cases.

With almost every case added in the last seven days linked to the Delhi Nizamuddin religious meeting; Tablighi Jamaat connection alone constitutes over 90 percent of AP’s COVID-19 tally.

Some among the previous 21 cases are also Markaz related, COVID-19 bulletins show.

Even as they were anticipating normalcy by April second week with a ban on international flights and completion of the 14 day quarantine of the around 29,000 foreign returnees, the sudden surge in the cases has made the senior medical and health officials and district administrators anxious, to say the least.

Most of Sunday's confirmed cases are from Kurnool. The Rayalaseema district with only one case last Sunday has 53 cases now, topping the AP COVID-19 chart.

“A week back, it looked manageable, but suddenly the Delhi cases started pouring in. Now, frankly, we are clueless as to how bigger this (nightmare) becomes,” a senior official coordinating COVID-19 mitigation measures in the state, told DH.

By Friday officials identified 1085 people as the Markaz attendees and that 946 among them were back in AP.

"Tests are conducted on all of them, we identified all primary contacts and are tracing the secondary contacts. They came back by several trains and roamed freely for several days. As of now it is impossible to say how many they might have infected,” said the official.

“Hiding of symptoms especially of women and concealing travel history has become a challenge. The lone person who died on March 30 was brought in critical condition to Vijayawada hospital and died within an hour, after his swab samples were collected. It was only revealed later that his son had attended the Markaz,” said one government doctor.

“If such infected people die without coming to our notice it will be a problem.”

The collector of a coastal district sounded exasperated when he said, “we had only one London returned patient with no contact infection. But the scenario changed with Delhi cases.” The district now has two dozen positive cases.

Chief Minister Jaganmohan Reddy is holding review meetings on COVID-19 daily. Following the outbreak in cases, the state has conducted a door to door survey of 1.28 crore households out of total 1.45 crore households. Those with any COVID-19 symptoms will be kept in observation and tests conducted accordingly.

On Sunday, Reddy directed officials for cluster screening in all red zones; testing of all people in contact with Markaz attendees. In Visakhapatnam, where 15 cases are reported, random tests were carried out in red zones dividing them into eight clusters and 20 samples taken from each cluster. They turned out to be negative, officials informed the CM.

Reddy, on Saturday, called COVID-19 “an invisible enemy we have to fight unitedly,” while appealing that no one should try to tag the spread to one community.

“We must show compassion towards those who tested positive. We should not discriminate in this hour of global crisis,” the CM said.