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, the Chief Minister said the State could maintain a low mortality rate of 0.89 percent as we have been adopting the strategy of aggressive testing in containment clusters, identifying the positive cases and providing them treatment and 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.

“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,” he said.

Together with the Rapid Antigen tests, tests have crossed the 70 000 mark and the average is at 60,000 tests per day. Samples are also being taken through 100 mobile labs in at least 1500 areas and we could penetrate even into the remote areas.

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. About 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,’’ Reddy said.

While thanking the Centre for support being provided in the fight against the pandemic, he said: ``As ours is a newly formed State with no Tier-I cities such as Hyderabad, Chennai of Bengaluru, we look forward to your help in ramping up the medical infrastructure in Tier-II cities.’’

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 who were at the meeting, according to a release.

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