Chittoor records more than 30% Covid positivity rate

Tirupati: For two consecutive days, Chittoor district has crossed 3,000 mark in daily Covid cases while the previous highest was 2,945 cases on May 1. Not only the unprecedented surge in Covid infections but the huge increase in positivity rate particularly in rural areas has been causing serious concern.

While the death toll was already high in the district and much ahead than other districts, Collector M Hari Narayanan has cautioned the officials that it may further go up if proper steps are not taken. He revealed that the positivity rate in several mandals was more than 30 per cent which is too high and needs immediate attention.

In the same breath, he revealed another shocking fact that there is no mandal in the district with less than 10 per cent positivity rate and it has been high even in several villages. It may be noted that about 18,000 fever cases were identified during the 6th and 7th rounds of fever surveys in the district while the 8th round started from Friday.

The official machinery has focussed on increasing the RT-PCR tests and Rapid Antigen tests and want to test all the suspected cases with either of these tests without any delay. The Collector has directed them to increase RT-PCR tests to 10,000 per day while Rapid Antigen tests will be held more in places which are far away from Tirupati to ensure quick results.

A total of 47,948 positive cases during May 1 to 20 show the gravity of the spread of virus in the district which is in second place in terms of total cases in the state with over 1.70 lakh cases. While the total official deaths have crossed 1,150 the actual death toll was much higher to that. During the last 20 days itself about 160 deaths were reported.

Out of the 3,063 cases reported on Friday, Tirupati, Chittoor, Madanapalle and Sirkalahasti account for 663 cases while the remaining cases are in other rural mandals. Kuppam recorded 115 and Tirupati rural 113 cases. In view of this more focus has been laid on the containment steps by village level committees, taskforce teams and others.

The ever increasing Covid infections have pushed the active cases to more than 25,000 making officials ramp up infrastructure facilities. The officials and elected representatives have been making efforts to increase hospital beds and bring in more Covid care centres (CCC). They were trying to keep 10 litre oxygen concentrators in all Covid hospitals and five litre concentrators at CCCs.

After inaugurating a 100-bedded CCC at Srikalahasti a couple of days ago, Minister for Panchayat Raj P Ramachandra Reddy said they will make the community health centre at Punganur as a full-fledged Covid hospital with 80 beds soon. He inaugurated a triage centre at the CHC on Friday. Steps were taken to set up another CCC at Sodum with 100 beds.