VIJAYAWADA: Even as Andhra Pradesh has been recording over 10,000 Covid cases a day lately, with the toll crossing 4,000, the medical and health department said the silver lining is that mortality rate is less than one per cent.
“The focus is on reducing the mortality rate in the state. All necessary measures are being taken for the same,” KS Jawahar Reddy, Special Chief Secretary (Health), said.
Speaking to reporters here on Tuesday, Jawahar Reddy said while Nellore, Chittoor and Prakasam have reported a rise in the death rate of Covid patients, the same in Anantapur, Guntur, Krishna, Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam districts has declined.
“Although 10,000 cases are getting registered every day, the death rate in the state is less than one per cent, which is lower than other high incidence states.’’
On the other hand, positivity rate has increased by 6.26 per cent with Nellore, Prakasam and Srikakulam recording major spikes in infections. However, the number of people testing positive in Anantapur, Guntur, Krishna, Kurnool and Vizianagaram has reduced over the past few days.
In the first phase of serosurveillance in the state, it was found out that 16.7 per cent of population in Anantapur, 14.4 per cent in East Godavari, 21.7 per cent in Krishna and 8.2 per cent in Nellore were exposed to the coronavirus, he added. Citing the survey, he said more people in urban areas and containment zones were exposed to the virus.
“The average doubling rate of Covid-19 cases is currently 30 days. In the span of a week, over 72,000 cases were reported, of which 56 per cent were from rural areas. As much as 96 per cent of the infections were reported from containment zones,” he said.
“We have set up help desks in 217 hospitals so far and answered over 14,000 calls through call centres,” added Reddy. He requested people to make use of facilities such as ‘104’ service and tele-consultation to report if they have any symptoms of the coronavirus.
He stated that the state government will be partnering with the UNICEF for an awareness campaign on the use of masks in the time of a pandemic.
Later, Jawahar Reddy visited Covid hospitals and care centres in Vijayawada and inspected medical facilities and infrastructure there.