VIJAYAWADA: Confirming that four Covid-19 cases were reported at the Raj Bhavan, Special Chief Secretary (Health) KS Jawahar Reddy has clarified that Governor Biswabhusan Harichandan tested negative for the virus. Speaking to mediapersons here on Tuesday, Jawahar Reddy said that four employees — a security officer, a staff nurse and two attenders — at the Raj Bhavan tested positive. Following this, tests were conducted for the rest of the staff, and all tested negative. He said samples of the Governor were tested and the results came negative.

However, he did not explain as to how the four employees of the Raj Bhavan contracted the virus. The Health Secretary informed that 31 frontline staff including 12 doctors, 12 nurses, 2 pharmacists and five sanitation workers contracted the virus across the State. Reiterating that conducting more tests will reveal the extent of virus spread, Jawahar Reddy appealed to people not to panic seeing the spurt in number of cases. “Andhra Pradesh is doing far better than other States and in fact, the State is ahead of others in both number of samples tested per million people and positivity rate.

Andhra Pradesh with 1,504 samples per million people stands first, Tamil Nadu with 1,103 per million and Rajasthan with 1,077 per million occupy second and third places,” he explained. When it comes to positivity rate, all-India figure stands at 4.13 per cent (7,16,733 samples were tested and 29,572 tested positive), while Andhra Pradesh has a positivity rate of 1.57 per cent only, compared to 8.44 per cent in Madhya Pradesh, 7.46 per cent in Maharashtra, 6.62 per cent in Gujarat and 2.28 per cent in Tamil Nadu, Jawahar Reddy said. 

According to him, Andhra Pradesh was also doing better than the national average when it comes to doubling of the virus cases. From April 9 to 28, the doubling rate at all-India level was 8.5 days, while doubling rate in AP was 9.8 days. Emphasising the need of conducting more tests, the health secretary said if tests were not conducted in an aggressive manner, people who contracted the virus could spread the same to others unknowingly. To prevent such a situation, there is a need for more tests, he stressed. 

“In 24 hours till today (Tuesday) morning, of the 82 cases, 75 were reported from the existing 15 clusters and seven outside them. An investigation is being done as to how they contracted the virus and if they were primary contacts of the confirmed cases in the clusters,” he explained. According to the guidelines issued by the Government of India, people with mild Covid symptoms can undergo home isolation. In case, they find it difficult at home, they can get directly admitted to COVID Care Centres. “We have converted quarantine centres in each district as Covid care centres with 300 beds, which will be under doctors’ supervision,” he said. 

The Health Secretary said there was a good response to telemedicine service (14410) introduced in the State and to date 8,865 people availed the facility. As many as 5,595 were provided prescriptions and 3,270 were given medical advice. Prescriptions were sent to patients as SMS to their phones and medical officers in PHCs in their area sent the prescribed medicines to the patients. “We are taking feedback and also initiating measures for further stabilising the service,” he explained. According to him, 1,170 general medical officers have been recruited and the testing capacity is being increased with three more virology labs being set up soon in Nellore, Prakasam and Srikakulam in addition to the existing nine labs. Efforts were also on for setting up virology labs in West Godavari and Vizianagaram, he said.