Aggressive tests keeping mortality rate low: YS Jagan Mohan Reddy

Amaravati: Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has said that the State could keep the Covid-19 mortality rate low with aggressive testing, contact tracing besides timely treatment and urged the Centre to provide help in ramping up the medical infrastructure.

During the video conference with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, the Chief Minister said the State could maintain a low mortality rate of 0.89 per cent as AP has been adopting the strategy of aggressive testing in containment clusters, indentifying the positive cases, providing treatment, containing the spread of the pandemic besides destigmatising and creating awareness among the people with the active involvement of over two lakh people from ground level upwards in various capacities.

Urging the Centre to extend maximum possible help to AP, he said: "We are grateful to you for the help being provided during these testing times, and as ours is a newly formed State with no Tier I cities like Hyderabad, Chennai or Bengaluru, we look forward for your help in ramping up the medical infrastructure in Tier II cities."

On his government's commitment to testing, Jagan said, "so far we have done 25,34,304 tests of which 2.35 lakh persons were positive. Tests per million in our State has logged 47,459. When the first case was reported in March, we had no virology lab and had to send the samples to Pune and from that stage we have progressively improved the infrastructure and now all the 13 districts in our State have testing labs and hospitals for Covid and they are self reliant."

Together with the rapid antigen tests, tests had crossed the 70,000-mark and the average was at 60,000 tests per day, he added. Samples were also being taken through 100 mobile labs in at least 1,500 areas and we could penetrate even into the remote areas.

After the testing was done, depending on the severity, the authorities were sending them to home isolation, or to Covid Care Centre or Covid hospitals. The Government had also increased the strength of ambulance vehicles to 1,088 and the vehicle was available from mandal (block) level so that anyone who required testing should not be deprived of the facility, he explained.

"The State has 138 Covid Care Hospitals with 37,189 beds and for people with mild symptoms we have identified 109 Covid Care Centres with a bed capacity of over 56,000. We have increased the bed strength with oxygen facility from 4,286 to over 11,000 during the past three months.

Over 32,000 personnel from doctors to nursing staff, technicians and other staff are working in 138 Covid care hospitals. We have also started helpdesks to guide the people on how to go about when symptoms are found," the CM said. Deputy Chief Minister Alla Nani, Home Minister M Sucharita, Chief Secretary Nilam Sawhney, Medical and Health Special Chief Secretary KS Jawahar Reddy were among those at the meeting.