The State reported one more death and 97 fresh cases of positive COVID-19 during the past day.

More than half of the fresh cases are of returnees from the Gulf countries.

Koyambedu link

While 44 cases are of persons who returned from Kuwait, three are of Abu Dhabi, UAE and two are of Qatar returnees, as per the bulletin issued by the State on Tuesday. The remaining 48 persons infected are within the State and four of them in Chittoor have Koyambedu links. So far, 111 foreign returnees who came back to the State as part of the Vande Bharat Mission tested positive for coronavirus.

The tally has gone up to 2,983 and there are 917 active patients. One more death was reported in East Godavari district taking the toll to 57.

2,009 patients discharged

On a brighter note, 125 persons including 55 local cases and 70 migrant cases, have recovered in the past day. As of Tuesday, a total of 2,009 patients were discharged after treatment.

The State has reached the 6,043 tests per million population ratio with a total of 3.22 lakh tests conducted so far. Recovery rate is at 67.3% and positivity rate is at 0.92% while mortality rate is at 1.91%.

ICMR approval

The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has approved the State government’s proposal to conduct Convalescent plasma therapy to treat COVID-19 patients at Sri Venkateswara Institute of Medical Sciences in Tirupati.

In a release, Special Chief Secretary K.S. Jawahar Reddy said that in the plasma therapy a dose of antibody-containing plasma obtained from the blood of recovered individuals is transferred to the affected persons to treat it.

“It’s an experimental therapy going back a hundred years, having found use – to different efficacies – in the treatment of the Spanish flu as well as, more recently, the 2009 H1N1 influenza, SARS and MERS viruses,” he said.

He said that the therapy could shorten the duration of COVID-19 illness in a person or render it less dangerous.

The government had already collected plasma from various COVID-19 patients recently.