Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy on Wednesday abstained from the videoconference of Prime Minister Narendra Modi held with Chief Ministers of various states to discuss measures to check the spread of coronavirus during 'Unlock 1.0'.
Officially, there was no word on why he chose not to attend the virtual interaction but sources said it was due to the ongoing Budget session of the Legislature.
"The Chief Minister wrote a letter to the Centre on various issues related to the COVID-19 lockdown and 'unlock' measures," a senior official of the Chief Minister's Office said.
Details of the letter were, however, not revealed because "we don't want to", the official said.
Jagan Mohan Reddy left the Legislature for his residence around the time the Prime Minister's videoconference was going on. It was the second day of the Prime Minister''s interaction with chief ministers to discuss the situation emerging post 'Unlock 1. 0' and the plan ahead for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.
Meanwhile, with 275 fresh COVID-19 cases reported in a 24-hour period ending at 9 am on Wednesday in Andhra Pradesh, the cumulative tally of the state reached 5,555. The total number of active cases in the state went up to 2,559 from 2,341 while 55 people recovered and were discharged from the hospital. With this, the total number of cured people in the state was reported to be 2,906.
The spike in the number of cases is the highest so far as the previous one-day high was 253 reported on Sunday.
With two more deaths, the death toll on Wednesday was reported to be 90. One death was reported from Kurnool while the other was reported from Guntur.
However, the mortality rate of the state has been improving as it dipped from 1.31% to 1.27% on Wednesday.
With IANS and PTI inputs
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