VIJAYAWADA: The daily count of Covid-19 cases in Andhra Pradesh surged past the 3,000-mark after more than four months. The State reported 3,309 new infections in the 24 hours ending Saturday 9 am. This is the highest daily count since November 25, 2020. The spike is more than 500 compared to Friday’s Covid tally.
Chittoor reported 740 new cases against 496 on Friday. Of the total 740 in Chittoor, 319 cases were reported in Tirupati urban, followed by 119 in Tirupati rural mandal and 46 in Chittoor town. Tirupati Municipal Commissioner PS Girisha attributed the spike in Covid cases to the influx of people from Bengaluru, Chennai, Vijayawada and other cities. He appealed to the people coming from other cities to self-isolate or quarantine themselves for at least seven days to curb the virus spread.
Chittoor and Guntur accounted for more than 1,200 new infections of the total count. Chittoor’s Covid tally surged past the 93,000-mark, while Visakhapatnam breached the 64,000-mark. Kurnool, East Godavari and Srikakulam also witnessed a spike in new infections.
The State has recorded more than 9.21 lakh Covid cases till now.The new recoveries were a little over 1,000. With the sharp surge in daily count, the number of active cases went past 18,000, registering a rise in more than 1,500 cases in a day. Chittoor has the highest caseload of 3,500, followed by Guntur with 2,600.
Apart from these two districts, six other districts have more than 1,000 active cases each, while West Godavari has the lowest caseload of 245. The total recoveries are more than 8.95 lakh. As many as 1,53,97,672 samples have been tested in the State so far with a positivity rate of 5.99 per cent.
Twelve fatalities were reported in the last 24 hours, the highest in the past five months. Srikakulam reported a fatality after nearly three months. Chittoor Covid toll reached 883 with three more deaths, Nellore, Visakhapatnam and Srikakulam reported two deaths each, Anantapur, Guntur and Krishna one fatality each.