Andhra Pradesh claims highest Covid-19 recovery rate in the country

State Covid-19 authorities say the decline now is post the peak reached in September

At 95.22 per cent, Andhra Pradesh claims to have achieved the highest Covid-19 recovery rate in the country, about six per cent above the national average of 89.53 per cent.

The state which confirmed its first positive case on March 12 from Nellore – of an Italy-returned man, has crossed the eight lakh figure on Friday – October 23.

However, in a cheerful news, the daily new cases have fallen drastically to between three and four thousand nowadays from around 10,500 cases a day reported previously.

While the state took just 10-11 days for each of the second to sixth one lakh cases and 14 days for the seventh lakh, the time period stretched to 22 days for the eighth one lakh cases to pile.

In Kurnool, which at one point became the epicentre of the Covid-19 spread, the daily new cases have fallen to two-digit numbers. On Friday, only 69 new cases were reported from Rayalaseema district.

A serosurvey carried out across the state in August projected Covid-19 prevalence in about 20 per cent of Andhra Pradesh's 5.34 crore population.

“The survey was done when the total cases were around four lakhs, now when it has reached eight lakhs we can assume that about fifty per cent of the total population is exposed to the virus,” Dr K Rambabu, state's Covid-19 nodal officer, told DH.

As cases reduce, the official said that the number of Covid-19 treatment hospitals has been reduced to 212 a fortnight back, from the 257 centres in September.

“Not letting guard down, next two months critical”

However, officials say they have not let the guard down. “Even now when the cases are observed as falling substantially, we are conducting about 80,000 tests daily,” Dr Rambabu says.

“All of us need to be very careful now. Malls, parks and other public places have opened and the festival season is on. Beginning with this week's festivities till December-January is going to be the critical phase in our fight against Covid-19,” the general physician says.

Andhra Pradesh with 8,00,684 cases as of Friday morning, is positioned second to Maharashtra which has double the number of cases. Karnataka is moving close to the eight lakh mark.

AP which registered 6,544 Covid-19 related deaths till now has at present 31,721 active cases. The state's mortality rate is 0.82 per cent, compared to the national average of 1.51 per cent.

With 1,39,101 samples tested per a million population, Andhra Pradesh is at the top among the states in the measure.