South coastal Andhra Pradesh continued to remain under the vice-like grip of coronavirus as 18 more patients, 11 in Prakasam and 7 in Nellore district, succumbed to the disease, while over 1,000 tested positive in the last 24 hours.
The toll mounted to 185 in Prakasam where 304 new cases took the cumulative tally to 12,948, while Nellore district’s tally reached 18,468 as 725 more tested positive. The toll, on the other hand, stood at 155, according to a health bulletin released by the State Government on Tuesday.
The number of discharged persons also increased, with 910 recovering in Nellore district and 572 in Prakasam. The number of discharges outnumbered the number of newly-infected persons by about 450 giving some respite for the health authorities grappling with the problem of overflowing patients at the hospitals.
Attributing the spike in positive cases to migrants returning to their native places, Prakasam District Collector P.Bhaskar here on Tuesday said the district had zero cases for three days when all those who returned from New Delhi after attending a religious congregation recovered. Stating that there was no scarcity of funds, he said oxygen facility would be provided to all the beds in the Government General Hospital.
Meanwhile, Superintendent of Police Siddharth Kaushal, who had taken the initiative to make all the police stations in the district COVID-19 protocol compliant, said the incidence of coronavirus was 6 to 7% among police personnel at the grassroots level as against 0.7% among the general population.
Despite the tough situation at the ground level, the personnel were contributing their mite in the long-drawn battle against the pandemic by educating the public and strictly enforcing lockdown.
The number of active cases in the two districts stood at 10,000 as about 500 persons each in the two districts on an average got infected every day.
The cumulative confirmed cases touched 3,000 in Ongole with 245 fresh cases. New cases came also from the villages of Jarugumalli(34), N.G.Padu(21), Pamur(21), Kothapatnam(20), Korisapadu(15), Lingasamudram(12) and Konakanamitla(9).
