Tirupati: Pilgrim city now becomes Covid city

Tirupati: Delhi, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and now it is the turn of Andhra Pradesh to see a rapid surge in Covid-19 cases in the country. The spike seems to be reaching its peak with 4994 new cases reported across the state on Tuesday. Rayalaseema districts have emerged as the districts where the increase in cases is very high.

Though the reasons behind the rapid increase of the cases is still to be established, officials of the state government are blaming those who had returned from other states like Karnataka and Telangana, etc, as they had lost their livelihood due to Covid-19 lockdown.

However, people wonder how this was possible since the state government had put strict restrictions on the entry of people from other states into Andhra Pradesh.

Meanwhile, Tirupati has now got the dubious distinction of the highest number of Covid-19 cases in the entire Rayalaseema region.

The total number of Covid cases reported from Tirupati was 2226 which was 40 percent of the total cases in Chittoor district which was 5386 as on July 20. The total deaths due to Covid in Tirupati was 22 as against 58 in the district till date revealing the alarming picture of Covid cases in the pilgrim centre.

The cases in other mandals or towns, including Srikalahasthi, which were once considered a hot bed of Corona in the district, remain far behind Tirupati.

The Covid cases started galloping for the last 10 days with about 100 cases reported daily forcing the administration to declare entire city as containment zone for imposing rigid restrictions. Even the flow of devotees to Tirumala has come down to 8000 per day. But TTD Chairman Y V Subba Reddy has sought to clarify that there would be no interruption in darshan services. He said the TTD had come to the conclusion that coronavirus was not spreading through devotees.

Among the infected, 676 were discharged after cure leaving 1528 active cases as on July 20 in the city.

Tirupati city wore deserted look on Tuesday due to the lockdown restrictions. All shops and business establishments both essential and non-essentials remain closed from 11 in the morning while movement of public and vehicles also came to stand still. Vehicles going to Tirumala for darshan were allowed on the Tirumala bypass.