State witnesses highest daily positivity rate of 36% again

Daily cases spike from 100 to 14,000 in just 26 days

A COVID-19 patient waiting for admission to the CSR Ward at King George Hospital in Visakhapatnam on Sunday.

Andhra Pradesh has again witnessed the pandemic's highest daily test positivity rate of 36.09% as 14,532 fresh cases of COVID-19 were reported in the 24 hours ending Monday morning.

Only 40,266 samples were tested in the past day. During the same period, seven deaths were reported.

The highest daily test positivity rate in the second wave was only 25.81% when about 45,000 samples were tested. When the second wave hit the peak of 24,000 infections a day, the daily test positivity rate was around 25% with over one lakh samples tested every day.

However, since the third wave began in the last week of December, the daily test positivity rate increased exponentially from a mere 0.3% to 36% in about 30 days.

Also, during the second wave, it took 74 days for the cases to rise from least to around 14,000 whereas in the current wave the daily tally jumped from about 100 cases to 14,000 cases in just 26 days.

Compared to the second wave, the daily tally was increasing three times faster and the test positivity rate was increasing 2.4 times faster. In 91 days until it reached the peak, the second wave reported an average of 6,006 infections a day and in the third wave, an average of 4,092 infections a day were reported in 29 days since December 27.

The cumulative toll and tally increased to 14,549 and 21,95,166 respectively while the number of recoveries stands at 20,87,282, including the 4,800 recoveries in the past day. The recovery rate came down to 95.09%.

So far, 3.21 crore samples were tested in the State and their positivity rate was 6.82%.

Two deaths were reported in West Godavari district and one each in Guntur, Kurnool, Nellore, Srikakulam and Visakhapatnam in the last 24 hours.

Visakhapatnam reported 1,728 infections. It was followed by Anantapur (1,610), Prakasam (1,597), Kurnool (1,551), Kadapa (1,492), Nellore (1,198), East Godavari (941), Srikakulam (865), Guntur (846), Chittoor (685), West Godavari (643) and Krishna (484).

The district tallies were as follows: East Godavari (3,01,755), Chittoor (2,66,149), Guntur (1,88,454), West Godavari (1,83,361), Visakhapatnam (1,77,591), Anantapur (1,66,657), Nellore (1,54,401), Prakasam (1,45,047), Kurnool (1,30,205), Srikakulam (1,29,984), Krishna (1,24,784), Kadapa (1,20,995) and Vizianagaram (88,356).