Andhra Pradesh's Covid death toll breaches 3,500 mark

 andhrapradesh | Written by : IANS Updated: Thu, Aug 27, 2020, 12:15 PM

Amaravati, Aug (IANS) With 81 fresh fatalities due to Covid-19, Andhra Pradesh's death toll rose to 3,541 on Wednesday.

During the last 24 hours, the state reported 10,830 new cases, taking the state's tally to 3,79,574.

Andhra Pradesh is the third worst-affected after Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu in terms of number of cases and has the fifth highest death toll in the country.

Officials said despite a large number of fatalities, the mortality rate of Andhra Pradesh was still low at 0.93 per cent against the national average of 1.84 per cent.

According to the media bulletin released by the State Command Control Room, 11 fatalities were reported from East Godavari district, nine from Prakasam and eight each from Chittoor and Kadapa. Six people each succumbed in Anantapur and West Godavari districts, five each in Krishna, Kurnool, Nellore, Visakhapatnam and Vizianagaram districts, and four people each in Guntur and Srikakulam districts.

Chittoor is the worst affected district in terms of fatalities with 360 deaths so far, followed by East Godavari (354), Guntur (350) and Kurnool (342).

During the last 24 hours, 1,528 cases were reported from East Godavari district, pushing the district's tally to 53,567, the highest in the state. As many as 1,156 cases were reported from Visakhapatnam and 1,065 from West Godavari.

The 24-hour period also saw 8,473 people recovering from the virus. With this the cumulative recoveries rose to 2,86,720. The recovery rate in the state stands at 74.97 per cent while the national average is 76.30 per cent.

The state now has 92,208 active cases with maximum 17,649 active cases in East Godavari, followed by 8,816 in Chittoor, 7,765 in Prakasam, 7,352 in Vizianagaram, 6,842 in Kurnool Aand 6,748 in Guntur district.

During the last 24 hours ending 9 a.m. Wednesday, the authorities conducted 61,838 tests comprising 33,968 VRDL/Truenat/NACO tests and 27,870 rapid antigen tests. With this the state has so far tested 34,18,690 samples.

Andhra Pradesh stands fourth after Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra in the number of tests conducted so far. However, it ranks first in terms of tests per million with a figure of 64,020. With a 11.19 per cent positivity rate, it fares better than states and UTs like Maharashtra (18.97 per cent), Karnataka (11.61) and Chandigarh (12.18).