Number of recoveries crosses the 20,000-mark in the district

Virus spread is slowly getting limited to the existent clusters: AMC Principal

Visakhapatnam , Andhra Pradesh : 17/08/2020: A woman getting tested at the mobile COVID testing bus at Government ENT hospital in Visakhapatnam on Monday, August 17, 2020. Photo : K.R. Deepak / The Hindu

There appears to be a few bright spots in the fight against COVID-19 in the district. The number of discharges from hospitals, COVID Care Centres and home isolation have crossed the 20,000-mark, while the active positive cases are around 4,700, as on Monday.

The number of discharges have gone up in the last 10 days and this has given some breathing space to the district administration.

“Today in the hospitals we have over 3,000 vacant beds and in the CCC the number of vacant beds are over 4,000,” said district COVID Special Officer and Principal of Andhra Medical College P.V. Sudhakar. “The district, especially the city, has been seeing a spike in cases in the last five to six weeks. On July 1, the total number of cases was around 900 and as on Monday the tally was 25,212. The district recorded over 14,000 cases in the last 16 days. But the number of discharges has gone up from 2,000 to 20,000 in the last two weeks,” said Dr. Sudhakar.

But despite the vacancy of beds increasing, the administration has decided to continue with the rule of admitting patients only with symptoms of Hypoxia (drop in oxygen level) and Dyspnea (breathlessness). This is crucial, as beds have to be reserved only for critical care and high- risk patients. The rest, mild to moderate cases can be treated at CCC or at home isolation, said Dr. Sudhakar.

Denotified clusters

Another bright spot is the increase in denotified clusters. From 39 denotified clusters, it has gone up to 171 in the last 10 days. This indicates that there have been no cases reported from some dormant clusters in the last 28 days. While denotified clusters have increased rapidly, there is a marginal increase in the very active clusters from 130 to 149, in the last 10 days. Drawing inference from the statistics, Dr. Sudhakar explained that new clusters are not being added in the rate that was happening in the last one month. “Most of the cases that we are recording now are from the existent very active or active clusters. This indicates that the spread is slowly getting limited to the existent clusters,” he said.

To tackle the spread in the existent clusters, the district administration has laid out the strategy of test, track and treat. The case have also increased due the enhanced level of testing, added Dr. Sudhakar.