Coronavirus: Andhra Pradesh takes ordinance route for 3-month budget

State records 13th positive case; P12 and P13 are primary contacts of P7 and P10 respectively

The Jaganmohan Reddy government has decided to bring in an ordinance allowing a vote on account budget for all the state expenses for three- months i.e. April 1 to June 30.

On Friday, the state cabinet took the decision since it was not possible to convene the budget session of the legislature in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The state has so far recorded 13 positive cases, with the first case from Nellore recovered.

The COVID-19 positive cases confirmed on Friday are -

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P12, Male from Visakhapatnam, is a primary contact of P7 who had returned from Birmingham. P13, Female from Guntur, is a primary contact of P10 who returned from a religious meeting in Delhi.

The cabinet meeting has also discussed the state’s measures to contain the spread of the virus. Jagan’s government has set up a taskforce with five ministers, 10 senior IAS officers and four officials from the CMO to coordinate with district-level teams.

The state has mapped about 28,000 foreign returnees and a constant vigil is kept on them and their contacts, said information & PR minister Perni Venkataramaiah after the meeting.

Alleging the opposition leader Chandrababu Naidu’s as playing politics with questions like how the number of returnees jumped from 13,000 to 28, 000, the minister explained that, “the first survey held on March 10 showed their figure as 13,000. But the recent survey revealed a higher figure as there was a rush of passengers both domestic and foreign with closure of airports and national lockdown.”

Read: Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases, deaths

Four hospitals - one each at Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and Nellore are now converted into dedicated super-specialty Covid-19 hospitals. The state has set up 100 bedded isolation centres in all the 175 assembly constituencies and a 200-bed isolation centres in each of the 13 districts.

About 400 ventilators are arranged across the state for COVID-19 purposes. Personal protection equipment like N-95 masks is being made available in the required numbers.