With 62 new COVID-19 cases detected on Friday, Andhra Pradesh has seen a steady rise in the number of cases being reported daily for about a week now. This comes with the state aggressively increasing its testing numbers.
According to the daily updates released by the government, a total of 6,306 samples were tested on Thursday, of which 62 have tested positive. On Wednesday, the state had tested 6,522 samples, of which 80 cases were found positive.
Since April 18, on an average, Andhra has tested nearly 5,500 samples each day. As of 10 am on April 17, the state had tested a total of 17,559 samples. Since then, the number has drastically increased, going up to 54,338 samples tested as of 10 am on April 24.
The cases have nearly doubled, increasing by 1.7 times in the past week. While the state had 572 positive cases as of April 17, the number of cases has now gone up to a total of 955.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Special Chief Secretary (Health) for the state K S Jawahar Reddy said that Andhra is equipped to conduct up to 6,980 tests per day, excluding antibody rapid test kits. “Pooled samples are being tested with RT PCR. We are able to do up to 3,480 of these in a day. We’re also using TrueNAT tests. With 49 TrueNAT labs and up to 225 machines, the capacity of these tests is up to 3,500,” he said.
While the Andhra government had earlier procured 1 lakh antibody rapid test kits from South Korea, the ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research) had directed states to temporarily refrain from using these kits due to quality issues. However, the Andhra Pradesh government on Thursday said that the ICMR had approved the use of test-kits procured by the state.
The rapid test kits were used to conduct up to 14,423 tests, and around 30 positive cases which were identified were sent for confirmation through RT PCR tests, an official statement said.
Most of the new cases have been from Guntur, Kurnool, Krishna and Chittoor districts. Jawahar Reddy said that the new cases in Guntur and Kurnool have been coming from the identified red zones alone, while in Chittoor, 7 cases were discovered in non-red zones, causing concern.
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