Special Chief Secretary (Health, Medical and Family Welfare) K.S. Jawahar Reddy has said that the COVID reproduction rate (RT), a key indicator of the average number of people infected by an infectious person, in Andhra Pradesh was at 1.09 for the cases reported in the last week of August that saw over 72,000 infections. The RT number that indicates the pace of virus spread should ideally be less than one.
Briefing the media on the COVID outbreak status in the State, Dr. Reddy said the reproduction rate was highest in Krishna district at 1.41 and it was followed by Srikakulam at 1.23, Chitoor at 0.98 and East Godavari at 0.85.
Dr. Reddy said the doubling rate of cases in the State was 30 days, and it was higher in Prakasam at 18.5 days and Nellore at 20.4 days. Kurnool’s doubling rate was 42 days, he said.
Surge in 2 districts
Dr. Reddy said that the surge in COVID infections was now being witnessed in Prakasam and Nellore districts, which saw an increase of 79% and 47% in cases in the recent fortnight (August 17 to 31) in comparison to the previous fortnight (August 3 to 16).
He said the recent fortnight saw an increase of 6.26% cases in the State while five districts of Anantapur, Guntur, Krishna, Kurnool and Vizianagaram saw a downward trend in the cases. Kurnool saw 24% fewer cases in the recent fortnight.
After Prakasam and Nellore, Srikakulam and West Godavari saw a 21% increase in cases each. East Godavari saw 1% rise in the number of cases, he said.
Dr. Reddy said that Guntur saw a significant downfall in the number of deaths. It is followed by Vizianagaram and Srikakulam, but Nellore saw a 60% rise in deaths.
Infections
During the same week (August 23 to 29), 44% of the infections were reported in urban areas and 56% were reported in rural areas indicating that prevalence of the disease was more in rural areas, he said.
On a brighter side, 96% of the infections were reported within containment clusters and only 4% were reported outside the clusters, Dr. Reddy said and added that the government was able to trace the source of infection in 97% cases.
He said sero-surveillance was conducted in four districts, and in next week the remaining would be covered.
About 21.7% population in Krishna, 16.7% population in Anantapur, 14.4% population in East Godavari and 8.2% population in Nellore was already exposed to the virus as per the survey, he said.
Dr. Reddy said that the government efforts to bring down death rate paid off as it was less than 1% and more efforts are being put to reduce it further.
Helpdesks
Dr. Reddy said that the government was running 221 government and private hospitals for COVID treatment and there were patients in 204 of them currently. He said 217 hospitals had helpdesks where all the information and status of bed availability was being displayed.
He said that the government was being transparent in COVID response and had made all information available on the dashboard and other portals.
He said the Health department’s focus now was on contact tracing and monitoring home isolation patients besides reducing the mortality rate.