Uneasy rise

With over 44,000 new COVID-19 cases in a week making the State fifth worst-hit in the country, efforts are on to quickly ramp up treatment facilities and reimpose restrictions in hotspots

July 25, 2020 09:43 pm | Updated 09:43 pm IST

The State, from being one with a low incidence of COVID-19 infections despite its high testing rate, has now become one of the major contributors to the daily new cases reported in the country.

Around July 1, when the country reported 19,148 new cases in a day, 845 of them were of Andhra Pradesh amounting to 4.41%. Three weeks later, on July 24, the State reported 8,147 new cases which accounted for 16.5% of the country’s 49,310 new cases in a day.

The rapid rise in infections has made the State the fifth worst-hit in the country. Andhra Pradesh’s 80,854 COVID-19 cases as on July 24 contributed to 6% of the country’s 13.36 lakh cases. The number of deaths too increased drastically.In July so far, 798 persons died.

On the brighter side, the State is also testing a huge number of samples daily. As of July 25, it has so far tested 15.9 lakh samples while the country tested 1.58 crore samples.

The State witnessed over 44,000 new cases in a week as of Saturday and the virus has been spreading at a high rate. East Godavari with over 8,500 active cases has become the State’s worst-hit district surpassing Kurnool, Guntur, Anantapur and West Godavari. More than half of the active cases are in these five districts.

Huge expenditure

On the other hand, treating tens of thousands of patients has become a Herculean task for the State government with new admissions averaging 6,200 a day in the past week.

There are nearly 44,000 patients undergoing treatment in the State. Only a small percent of them are under home quarantine and the government has added 54 new COVID hospitals recently with more private hospitals coming forward to treat coronavirus patients in compliance with the Health Department norms.

The government has been spending ₹6.5 crore per day for treatment of patients, tests, medication, medical facilities and other related expenses and Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy has announced that the government would spend about ₹1,000 crore in the coming six months.

He said the government is ready to administer high-end Remdesivir and Tocilizumab anti-viral drugs which cost about ₹35,000 a dose to the patients in a critical condition.

Meanwhile, asymptomatic patients are being encouraged to choose home isolation. A COVID positive person has to undergo certain tests at a triage centre after which based on his or her condition home isolation will be advised. As one of the measures to contain the novel coronavirus spread, the government has made masks mandatory at all public places and during travel.

It is apparent that cases increased gradually after the relaxation of lockdown restrictions. On any given day in the past 10 days,the positivity rate of tests was not less than 10%. This means at least 10 persons in 100 persons tested turned positive.

However, officials are now resorting to imposing lockdown at mandal, town and city level in various places of the State. The latest is Vijayawada where partial lockdown has been imposed in 11 areas comprising 21 containment zones.

Increased testing

The Health Department is of the view that the increase in the infections reported is due to targeted testing of the vulnerable and contacts of the patients identified.

Officials claim that a large number of tests are being carried out on high-risk groups which is leading to the detection of more positive cases. Further, officials estimate that the State is likely to hit the peak of the pandemic curve soon and then see a gradual decrease in the number of new cases.

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