E-Paper
19 more positive cases in Andhra Pradesh in last 24 hrs, tally goes up to 180
At the same time, two Covid-19 patients with travel history to the UK – one each from Ongole and Kakinada, were discharged from the hospitals after they tested negative in a series of tests, a bulletin released by the AP medical and health department said on Saturday.
As many as 19 fresh positive cases for Covid-19 were reported in Andhra Pradesh in the last 24 hours, including 16 cases since Friday night, taking the total number of coronavirus cases in the state to 180, health department officials said.
Meanwhile, two Covid-19 patients with travel history to the UK – one from Ongole and one from Kakinada, were discharged from the hospitals after they tested negative in a series of tests, the AP medical and health department said on Saturday.
With this, the total number of patients discharged till date went up to four. Including these four cases, the cumulative number of positive cases in the state is 184.
The state reported its first death on Friday -- a 55-year old man from Vijayawada, who contracted the Covid-19 disease from his son who returned from Tablighi Jamaat conference held in New Delhi in the second week of March.
However, the department has not made it clear whether the fresh 16 cases that were reported in the last 12 hours, had anything to do with Nizamuddin meet.
Out of the total of 161 positive cases were reported in the state till Friday morning, 140 cases were related to the Tablighi Jamaat event, the officials told chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy at a review meeting on Friday.
He instructed the officials to strictly implement all the guidelines keeping in view the sudden hike in cases after the return of attendants of the Tablighi Jamaat.
A total of 1085 people from AP attended the Tablighi Jamaat event, of which 946 were identified and their samples were collected for testing. Out of 881 samples tested, 108 samples detected positive.
About 626 members who came in contact with the Delhi meeting returnees were also tested and 32 among them were detected positive, said officials.
The chief minister sought details on the house-to-house survey being conducted by ANMs, Asha workers, volunteers. For the same, the officials said that the survey was conducted in 1.28 crore households from the existing 1.45 crore households in the state. Those who have shown any of the symptoms of COVID-19 will be observed in the second phase and tests will be conducted accordingly.
The officials said that two new testing centers are now functional in Guntur and Kadapa. Moreover, another testing center in Visakhapatnam would be functional from Monday. Currently, the testing labs have the capacity to conduct 700 tests every day and that will be increased to 900 per day after coordinating with private testing labs.
