COVID-19 cases in Andhra Pradesh have continued to rise at a steady pace, with most cases concentrated in Kurnool, Guntur and Krishna districts.
Of the 5 red zone districts, Chittoor and Nellore have been recording fewer cases in comparison to Krishna, Guntur, and Kurnool. Among these, Kurnool continues to be the worst-affected, with a total of 516 known cases of which 392 are active. Kurnool also registered the highest number of deaths so far, with 10 people in the district losing their lives to COVID-19.
In the past two days, Kurnool has recorded 25 cases per day. Before that, on May 3, 30 cases were recorded in Kurnool, while 25 cases were detected each day on May 1 and May 2.
Guntur is also seeing a steadily rising pattern. Though the district only saw 2 cases on May 2, a big drop from the 19 cases recorded the previous day, the numbers began to rise again. On May 3, the district saw 11 cases recorded, followed by 19 cases the next day, and 13 cases on Tuesday. Guntur has a total of 351 known cases as of Tuesday, with a large chunk of them concentrated in Narasaraopet. According to reports, as of Monday, Narasaraopet town alone had 142 known COVID-19 cases.
In Krishna district, where a huge spike in cases was seen around 10 days when two people who had socialised with their neighbours ended up infecting multiple people as a result, the number of cases have continued to rise at a steady pace. As of Monday, Vijayawada alone had recorded 225 cases. A few days ago, district officials had revealed that for multiple cases in Vijayawada, the source of infection could not be traced, raising concern among authorities.
The state recorded 67 new cases on Tuesday, after testing 8,263 samples in 24 hours. Apart from the district-wise cases, 14 cases were noted as coming for Gujarat, and haven’t been added to the tally of any district. With this, the state’s tally is at 1,717 cases. While 589 people have recovered so far, 34 people
The cases from Gujarat could be related to around 900 fishermen who had been brought back from Gujarat, where they had been stranded since the lockdown began. Most of them are from the north-coastal districts of Srikakulam, Vizianagaram and Visakhapatnam. While Visakhapatnam district has recorded 37 cases in total so far, Srikakulam has only 5 cases. Vizianagaram, the only green-zone district, continues to have zero cases.
Earlier, in reference to the opening up of inter-state transport, the state government had announced that everyone entering the state would be screened for COVID-19 before being sent to their homes.
The only silver lining is that red zone districts in Andhra went down from 11 to 5.