The spread of COVID-19 cases to the countryside has become a serious cause for alarm, where officials are facing difficulty both in containment as well as contact tracing.
Varadaiahpalem, the remote mandal headquarters town bordering Tamil Nadu, registered eight positive cases in a single day, sparking panic among residents. It is believed that a person who returned from Chennai turned out to be the carrier, while the virus was transmitted to people in the vicinity through his primary contacts. Donka Street, which has registered a huge number of cases, has been closed and barricaded. Mandal officials went around the town urging people to stay indoors, and strictly follow social distancing norms when venturing out. Similar is the case in several remote mandals.
Though the entire Tirupati city was declared a containment zone, and a total lockdown clamped in the region, the absence of a lockdown in nearby villages is a cause for concern. Officials say that the spread of COVID-19 is alarming in Tirupati Rural, Renigunta and Chandragiri mandals, which overlap with the city’s outskirts.
The spread of the pandemic in these villages can take a heavy toll, as monitoring people’s movement is difficult.
“Unlike in towns, the elderly and the children and kids are used to going around the village and being in close proximity with neighbours. There is a greater need for awareness and vigil in rural areas,” said TNSF national coordinator A. Ravi Naidu, who hails from Chandragiri. Though local legislator and whip Ch. Bhaskar Reddy arranged Vitamin C tablets and masks for every household earlier, residents favour another round of distribution in view of the intensity of the situation.
BJP Kadapa district secretary G.S.T. Lakshman Rao, who is also the party’s COVID-19 helpline in-charge, wrote to Collector Ch. Hari Kiran to get the 55 inmates of Kamisetty Andalamma old age home checked,in view of their advanced age. With the senior citizens found to be suffering from cough and cold, he requested deployment of the Sanjeevani mobile testing bus at their doorstep.
Meanwhile, 34 patients were discharged from the SVIMS State COVID-19 Hospital after recovering and testing negative for the same. Twenty-nine of them hail from Chittoor district, three from Nellore and one each from Kadapa and Ananthapuram districts.
In all, 310 passengers were getting treated on Tuesday at the hospital meant for serious cases pertaining to Rayalaseema districts. The VRDL received nasopharyngeal samples from 2,000 persons on a single day. Similarly, 94 persons were discharged from local hospitals, including 12 from Maternity Hospital, 77 from Srinivasam quarantine and five from Ruia GGH.
