The district of late has been seeing a change in pattern in the spread of COVID-19. From the initial spurt in the urban areas, there has been a relative shift towards the rural and suburban areas.
Initially, the spread was in the city in areas such as Allipuram, Muslim Thatichetlapalem, Akkayyapalem and Railway New Colony. But in the last few weeks, the focus has shifted towards Anakapalle (urban), Sabbavaram, Atchutapuram, Narsipatnam, Kasimkota, Munagapaka and Anakapalle (rural).
This according to Andhra Medical College Principal P.V. Sudhakar is due to the influx of natives who were part of the migrant workforce in other States such as Tamil Nadu.
“Initially, the spread was through a few foreign returnees and the spurt was initiated by the New Delhi returnees who attended a religious congregation in Nizamuddin Markaz. Then there were a number cases, which were spread from the returnees of Koyembedu market in Chennai. But now the spread is through the migrants, and it is increased after opening up of the air, road and rail transport,” he said. In the last four days, the district recorded 71 cases and in the last one month the count has gone up by 150. “At least 70% are primary contacts of migrants or returnees from other high risk States,” said Dr. Sudhakar.
But the good news is that there is no community spreading. Most of the spread is limited to the primary or secondary contacts, so far.
According to him, the contact listing and mapping has been very effective in the district. “Apart from the listing and mapping, the maintenance of the containment zones have been effective. This has paid dividends,” he said.
So far the spread is between close clusters, but the clusters are multiple, and that is why we have about 52 active clusters, which includes 26 being very active, nine active and 17 being dormant clusters, he adds.
Social distancing
According to Dr. Sudhakar, New York city for the first time since the outbreak of COVID-19 recorded zero deaths three days ago. “This is because of strict adherence to the social distancing norm,” he said.
Now that things are opening up there is bound to be a spike, but the only way to contain is to maintain social distancing, following the norms of wearing masks and frequent sanitising and strict containment, said the AMC principal.
Doctors at the AMC feel that the police should enforce the containment, as they had done in Lockdown 1.0. The containment zones have been redefined and the radius of containment for very active zones is 1 km, 400 metres for active and 200 mts for dormant zones.
‘5,400 beds ready’
Talking about the preparedness, Dr. Sudhakar said that about 5,400 beds are ready in 20 hospitals of which 1,400 have oxygen supply. There are 136 ventilators and over 10,000 quarantine beds. So far about 56,000 tests have been conducted both Truenat and RT-PCR and 6,000 VTM (viral transport media) is always at hand in the district. “Every week we are replenished by 2,500 Truenat kits,” said Dr. Sudhakar.
