The 30 days of coronavirus that shook Andhra Pradesh

VIJAYAWADA: Exactly a month ago on March 12, Andhra Pradesh recorded its first COVID-19 case when a youth from Nellore, with a travel history to Italy, tested positive for coronavirus. The State government by then had already started monitoring all the foreign returnees and ensured that they were quarantined and tested, if necessary. But, four weeks later, the State has 405 Coid-19 cases with seven deaths and 11 recoveries (as of Saturday evening).

The much-talked-about curve of the pandemic remained stable in the first two weeks since the first positive case emerged, and, in fact, the number of cases was in single digits even on March 23 when Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy announced a state-wide lockdown, a day before Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced nation-wide lockdown. Just four days after the Chief minister expressed relief, on March 26, that the number of cases stood at 10 and that more efforts would be made for containment of the outbreak, things drastically changed. With scores of attendees of the Tablighi Jamaat meeting in New Delhi, who returned to the State between March 17 and 19, testing positive for coronavirus, AP witnessed a surge in number of cases. By April 1, AP breached the 100-mark in the number of positive cases. By April 5, another 100 cases emerged.

The State officials said their entire focus till then was on foreign returnees, who were about 30,000 in number and about 80,000 of their contacts. “Till the Nizamuddin Markaz cases emerged, the situation was well under control. Tracing and testing the 1,042 Jamat attendees proved a challenge. Most of the cases we have today are either Jamaat returnees or their contacts,” an official from the state nodal office said. “We managed to identify and test them by the end of first week in April. But, this one cluster has changed the entire dynamic of the pandemic in State,” the official noted.

The government had earlier followed a protocol to do only targeted testing, which means those with foreign travel history and those who visited affected clusters in the country would only be tested. But the Jamaat cluster has prompted the government to increase its ambit of sample collection. The State has almost doubled its testing from around 360 on March 26 to over 700 by March 31. Subsequently, the testing  was ramped up significantly and by April 1, 1,313 samples were collected. “From then, the number of tests has only increased and as of Saturday we tested about 7,300 people,” the official explained.

The efforts seemed to have proven effective as the State managed to bring down sudden spikes in the number after April 6, a day the State crossed the 300-mark. It took five days from then to see another 100 COVID-19 cases, as per the government bulletin.

Challenges ahead 
Does this mean that the State is on its way to see the flattening of the pandemic curve? “We keep our fingers crossed. For now, we are ramping up our tests. We have managed to test and quarantine most of the symptomatic cases. Now, we are going to test general people as 85 per cent of cases could be asymptomatic. Asymptomatic cases can still be carriers and transmitters of the virus. So, in the next 15 days if we can test more samples, we can bring down the curve,” commissioner for health and family welfare Katamaneni Bhaskar told TNIE.

About five lakh rapid test kits were ordered by the State, according to the commissioner. All the districts were being supplied with the rapid kits and the State wants to test at least 4,000 samples a day. The rapid testing is expected to begin next week. “Already on a pilot basis, rapid testing has been done. Probably in the next few days, we can start the exercise across the State,” Bhaskar added.

The state health department has also stocked and ordered enough testing kits, personal protective equipment, N95/P95 masks, and other necessary medicines like hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and others. Necessary isolation beds and quarantine facilities have also been identified, besides the four state covid-19 hospitals and 13 district covid-19 hospitals. 

Regarding the challenges ahead, another official said management of healthcare experts such as doctors, nurses, paramedics, sanitation workers and others would be critical. “All said and done, no country, let alone a state, is prepared to fight a pandemic of this magnitude. So, there are a few challenges like managing the available healthcare facilities and manpower. But, we are confident of effectively managing it,” the official noted.