Covid-19: New cases below 9,000 mark for four days in a row in Andhra Pradesh

In a sign of respite for the health authorities and common public, Covid-19 case incidence is showing a decline in Andhra Pradesh.

The new daily cases which were hovering between 10,000 to 11,000 for over a month have fallen below 9,000 for the last four days. The centre had categorised Andhra Pradesh, besides Maharashtra, Karnataka, reporting a high number of cases as an area of concern in the Covid-19 fight.

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On Thursday, when AP’s overall Covid-19 case tally had crossed the six-lakh mark, 8,702 new positive cases were reported against the 77,492 samples tested.

On Wednesday 16 September, the new cases registered were 8,835, when 75,013 tests were conducted. The record single-day addition was 10,830 cases on August 26.

The state took 10-11 days for each of the last five lakh cases to add to the Covid-19 tally. The first one lakh cases took 137 days.

Health officials see this as a sign of stabilizing of the Covid-19 curve in Andhra Pradesh, which is at second position nationwide, after Maharashtra.

“In some of the worst affected districts like Krishna, Kurnool where the curve reached the peak, the new daily case numbers have fallen considerably,” state Covid-19 coordinator Dr Prabhakar Reddy tells DH.

Dr Reddy attributes the decline to the probable “development of herd immunity in some areas, and the improved awareness of Covid-19 spread and public taking precautions like wearing masks and maintaining social distancing.”

“Going by the latest trend, we expect the curve to further drop towards September end,” Dr Reddy says.

The twin Godavari districts are the only areas lately reporting over a thousand cases daily.

The total cases in Andhra Pradesh are now 6,01,462 with 12.31 per cent positivity rate. 88,197 of these are active. Total deaths connected to Covid-19 and co-morbidities is 5,177 with a 0.86 per cent mortality.

The Jaganmohan Reddy government which is administering rapid antigen tests in addition to RT-PCR while also utilizing the Truenat (used for TB tests), and NACO method of detecting AIDS. It has conducted about 49 lakh tests till now, with 91,468 samples tested per a million population.

A serosurvey conducted in two phases in August, with a total of about 59,000 samples collected from the 13 districts in the state projected about 20 per cent of the 5.4 crore population in Andhra Pradesh as infected by the Covid-19 virus.

The percentage of asymptomatic persons among those who tested positive varied between 90 to 100 per cent in these districts. All those who tested positive from among the 5000 people in Chittoor district have shown no signs of the illness.

A slightly higher number of women (19.9 per cent) are stated to have been infected than males (19.5). The occurrence among the high-risk population i.e., senior citizens, and those with comorbid conditions is 20.3 per cent.

The Covid-19 prevalence is found to be 22.5 per cent in the urban areas and 18.2 in rural.