Steady rise in Covid cases haunts people of Chittoor

Tirupati: The Covid scenario in Chittoor district has been scaring the people as the daily cases continue to soar to above 1,500 positives each day. The active cases in the district have already crossed the 12,000 mark, though the state bulletin puts it at 10,446 on Friday which raises suspicion of hiding the actual numbers and lack of transparency in maintaining Covid cases data.

The state bulletin on Wednesday showed 9,919 active cases while the district reported 2,338 positive cases on Thursday which has to take the active cases to above 11,000 even if there were some recovered cases. But surprisingly, the daily state bulletin on Thursday put the active cases number at 9,888 which was even lower than the previous day.

After adding up 1,585 daily cases on Friday, the number of active cases showed in the bulleting stand at 10,446 which implies that another 1,000 plus Covid patients have recovered in a single day. In other words, according to the state bulletin, 3,394 patients have recovered in two days while 3,923 new cases were reported during the same period which raises doubts over the correctness of the data.

Already, the district has reduced the number of Covid tests significantly and confined itself to conduct around 4,000 tests only which has been forcing many people to return without giving their swabs. Unconfirmed reports say that the private labs, who have been charging exorbitant prices for RT-PCR tests, were asked not to enrol the positive cases in the app but only give the report to the people concerned.

The temple city has been shivering with fevers during the past few days with which thousands of people were suffering. Though many of them are viral fevers, in the absence of tests, people could not ascertain the type of fever with which they were suffering.

Taking note of prevailing precarious situation, CPM demanded the authorities to declare a health emergency in the city and conduct a fresh round of fever survey immediately. CPM city secretary T Subramanyam said every house in the city has fever patients and more than one lakh fever cases were there in the district. He flayed the role of state government and municipal corporation officials for not taking preventive steps and for Covid tests not being conducted in urban health centres. Meanwhile, District Collector M Hari Narayanan visited the Chittoor government hospital on Friday and directed the authorities to increase the number of beds and oxygen levels from time to time.