Andhra's Covid cases breach 4 lakh-mark

Amaravati, Aug 29 Andhra Pradesh on Friday recorded 10,526 new Covid-19 cases to cross the 4 lakh-mark while 81 fresh fatalities pushed the death toll to 3,714.

With over 10,000 cases for a third consecutive day, the state's tally mounted to 4,03,616. Andhra Pradesh thus became the second state with the highest number of cases after Maharashtra, which has so far registered over 7.33 lakh cases.

Andhra Pradesh has overtaken Tamil Nadu as the second worst affected state in terms of the number of Covid cases.

In the last three days, the state has added 31,977 cases.

Andhra Pradesh also has the fifth highest death toll in the country. However, officials said that despite a large number of fatalities, the mortality rate was still low at 0.92 per cent against the national average of 1.83 per cent.

According to the media bulletin released by the state command control room, 10 fatalities were reported from Chittoor, nine from Kadapa and eight each from Nellore, Prakasam and West Godavari district.

Six people each succumbed each in East Godavari, Kurnool and Visakhapatnam districts, five each in Anantapur, Krishna and Srikakulam. Four people died in Guntur while Vizianagaram district reported one death.

Chittoor is the worst affected district in terms of fatalities with 379 deaths so far, followed by East Godavari (370), Kurnool (361) and Guntur (359).

In the last 24 hours, 1,178 cases were reported from the East Godavari district, pushing the district's tally to 55,834, the highest in the state. As many as 1,151 cases were reported from Nellore and 986 from West Godavari.

The 24-hour period also saw 8,463 people recovering from the virus. With this the cumulative recoveries rose to 3,00,816.

The state now has 96,191 active cases with maximum 18,318 active cases in East Godavari, followed by 8,965 in Prakasam, 8,843 in Chittoor, 7,477 in Guntur and 7,390 in Vizianagaram.

During the last 24 hours, the authorities conducted 61,331 tests comprising 33,178 VRDL/Truenat/NACO tests and 28,153 rapid antigen tests. The state has so far tested 35,41,321 samples.

( With inputs from IANS )