VIJAYAWADA: The impact of Covid-19 in Andhra Pradesh is steadily decreasing, Principal Secretary (Health) Anil Kumar Singhal said referring to the reducing positivity and death rates, and increasing availability of hospital beds (both ICU and oxygen).
Briefing mediapersons on Saturday, he said: “Against 10,413 from 85,311 samples testing positive a day ago, 10,373 cases emerged from 88,441 samples on Saturday, bringing down the positivity rate to 11.73 per cent today from 12 per cent on Friday.”
The decrease in new cases and increase in hospital discharges also brought down the demand for beds. From 1,664 available on Friday, 1,774 ICU beds were available on Saturday; 8,164 oxygen beds were vacant. “Even the number of people being admitted to Covid care centres is decreasing.
From 14,246 patients on Friday, the CCCs were treating only 12,247 were getting treatment on Saturday. As many as 3,247 patients were discharged against 1,248 new admissions,” he explained.
Singhal said the state lifted only 356 MTs on Friday and 406 MTs the next day of liquid medical oxygen even as allocated quantity is 590 MTs, which shows the reducing dependency on oxygen. As of Saturday, 1,460 black fungus cases had been reported across the state, he added. According to him, the quantum of calls to ‘104’ call centres have also decreased. On Friday, the centres received 3,351 calls and 3,061 calls on Saturday.
Vaccination
The principal secretary was confident that all 1.33 crore people over the age of 45 will be vaccinated in the next one month. “As of date 1,06,47,444 doses of Covid vaccines have been administered: 25,65,162 people were administered both the doses, and 55,13,120 were given just the first dose. As of Friday, the state was left with 3,22,220 doses, all of which are expected to be administered by the end of today.”
He said 53.08 per cent of healthcare and frontline workers, and people over 45 years of age were given at least one vaccine jab. Out of the total 1,33,07,889 people aged above 45 years, 18,66,082 have been administered both doses of Covid vaccine while 47,91,032 were given only the first dose.
As regards to the preparations for the anticipated third wave of Covid19, Singhal said Pediatric Task Force Committee has submitted its preliminary report concerning beds, ICUs and other infrastructure and the same will be made public after discussions with the chief minister on Monday.
Government hikes stipend for senior resident doctors
The state government has agreed to the demand of senior resident doctors as it decided to increase the stipend with retrospective effect from last September. A decision to this effect was taken during a meeting with the CM, said Anil Kumar Singhal. He said the monthly stipend was increased to `70,000 pm from `45,000 pm. The CM also agreed to give the same stipend to thoe PG students who completed their course in April