Continuing to witness a surge in COVID-19 infections daily, the State reported 3,205 fresh cases in the 24 hours ending Wednesday morning. It was the highest single-day tally in the past six and half months or 194 days since July 3. Contrary to the rising incidence of infections, no death was reported in the State during the past three days.During the week (January 6 to 12), 9,503 infections were reported registering a 500% rise over the 1,527 infections reported in the previous week (December 31 to January 5).The test positivity rate of the 41,954 samples tested in the past day was 7.64%, the highest in seven months (214 days) since June 12, which was just a month after the peak week of the second wave in May last year. Until a week ago, on January 6, the daily positivity rate was around 1%. The cumulative tally increased to20,87,879while the toll remain at14,505. The active cases tally crossed 10,000 and reached10,119for the first time in 101 days. The number of recoveries increased to20,63,25with 281 fresh recoveries, while the recovery rate came down to 98.82%. During the past week, 1,226 patients recovered.
Vizag, Chittoor top
Visakhapatnam and Chittoor continue to report a spike in infections. Visakhapatnam reported 695 infections, the highest daily tally by a district since June 2021. It was followed by Chittoor with 607 infections. While the two districts reported more than 40% of the fresh cases together, the remaining 11 districts reported not more than 300 fresh cases each.They include East Godavari (274), Srikakulam (268), Guntur (224), Krishna (217), Vizianagaram (212), Nellore (203), Anantapur (160), Kurnool (123), Prakasam (90), West Godavari (90) and Kadapa (42). More than half of the State’s active cases were in Chittoor (2,129), Visakhapatnam (1,967) and Krishna (1,008) districts, while the other districts have only three-digit active case tallies.
Bed occupancy
According to the Health Department’s bed occupancy report, 203 ICU beds, 556 oxygen beds, 225 general beds, 41 beds with ventilators and two paediatric ICU beds were occupied by COVID patients in the State as of 5 pm, Wednesday.The district tallies are as follows: East Godavari (2,95,960), Chittoor (2,50,980), West Godavari (1,80,440), Guntur (1,80,209), Visakhapatnam (1,60,959), Anantapur (1,58,984), Nellore (1,47,881), Prakasam (1,39,089), Kurnool (1,24,531), Srikakulam (1,24,333), Krishna (1,21,725), Kadapa (1,16,200) and Vizianagaram (83,693).