A year passed since the first COVID-19 case was confirmed and reported in the State on March 12 last year in SPSR Nellore district.
Little did people and the officials know that the State would witness the rapid spread of the disease so much that over 10,000 cases and close to 100 deaths were reported in a day in August.
The pandemic curve peaked in the sixth month (August 12 to September 11) as 3.03 lakh infections, 2,576 deaths were reported and continued to flatten thereafter. Only 2,486 infections were reported in the past month.
Only in a few districts
Meanwhile, though the lowest single-day tally of 30 infections in the past several months was reported nearly a month ago, the daily tally began witnessing a spike since then. An average of 113 new infections per day was reported in the past two weeks and in the past 24 hours, 174 new infections, the highest single-day tally in the past 50 days, was reported indicating the spike in the incidence of infections. The number of active cases almost doubled in the last two weeks.
However, the rapid spread of the disease could be seen only in a few districts, including Chittoor, Krishna, Visakhapatnam, Guntur and East Godavari, which account for 69% of the total infections reported in the past two weeks.
Chittoor alone reported 469 infections in two weeks, while Krishna reported 191, Visakhapatnam reported 179, Guntur reported 144 and East Godavari reported 116 cases.
The overall tally increased to 8,91,178 and with 174 new cases in 24 hours ending Thursday morning and toll reached 7,179 with two new deaths. The number of active cases and recoveries also increased to 1,158 and 8,82,841 respectively. As many as 47,803 samples were tested in the past day and so far 1.44 crore samples were tested.
Sixty of the new cases were reported in the Chittoor district which also witnessed two deaths. It was followed by Krishna (26), Visakhapatnam (23), Guntur (12), East Godavari (11), Kurnool (8), Srikakulam (7), Prakasam (7), Anantapur (6), West Godavari (6), Kadapa (5) and Nellore (3). Vizianagaram reported no new case.
The district tallies were as follows: East Godavari (1,24,542), West Godavari (94,372), Chittoor (87,855), Guntur (75,830), Anantapur (67,829),Nellore (62,525), Prakasam (62,229), Kurnool (60,943), Visakhapatnam (60,182), Kadapa (55,443), Krishna (49,082), Srikakulam (46,279) and Vizianagaram 41,172).
Chittoor has the highest death toll of 856 and Krishna has the highest death rate of 1.39%.
