Coronavirus continued to spread rapidly in south coastal Andhra Pradesh as 207 persons — 142 in Prakasam district and 65 in SPSR Nellore district — tested positive for the dreaded disease in the last 24 hours.

With this, the number of cumulative positive cases rose to 894 in Prakasam district and 946 in SPSR Nellore district.

A total lockdown was implemented Sivaprasad Colony, Power Office area, Bhagyanagar, Sujatha nagar in Ongole which reported fresh cases.

The new cases came also from villages of Ghadiyapudi, Kopparapadu, Vetapalem, Podili, Thuravagunta, Gollapalem, Perala, Challareddypalem, Parchur and Tripurantakam. Two boys aged six and seven from Darsipet and Ongole were among those who got infected in Prakasam district.

Containment zones

With this, the very active containment zones rose to 34 and active zones 58 in the district.

The worrying aspect was that 76 patients were neither primary or secondary contacts of already infected persons, said health officials who feared that the disease had started to spread at the community level. Only one of the infected persons had come from outside the State.

In SPSR Nellore district Kovur accounted for a maximum of 12 new cases, followed by Venaktagiri and Sangam with eight cases each, Nellore with seven cases and Saidapuram with four cases, according to a health bulletin released by the Medical and Health department on Saturday night.

Fresh cases were registered in among other places, Sullurpeta, Gudur, Tada, Buchireddipalem and Kaluvoya in the district. As many as 199 persons were quarantined.