North-coastal Andhra district of Srikakulam, which along with neighbouring Vizianagaram, has been among the few districts in the entire country that had been out of the Coronavirus pandemic, lost its uniqueness on Saturday.
The district reported three positive cases for Corona, for the first time since the outbreak of pandemic in March. The cases were from Kaguvada village of Pathapatnam mandal and were contact of a person who returned from Delhi.
Apparently, the person working in Railways department in New Delhi, travelled along with Tablighi Jamaat members in the train on March 17 and returned to his village.
He had been in home quarantine since then, but after completing the quarantine period, he had met quite a few people.
Interestingly, he had tested negative in the rapid test and even in the Truenat tests, he tested negative. However, three of his close relatives who he had met tested positive on Saturday.
Following this, the district administration sounded a high alert in the entire district. As many as 200 people had been quarantined, while 22 others who reportedly came in contact with the positive cases are being subject to tests.
As many as 27 villages surrounding Kaguwada were declared as Red Zone and stringent lockdown measures are being imposed in the district. Authorities announced that essential commodities would be supplied to the people at their door steps.
However, neighbouring Vizianagaram continues to be in the safe zone with no Coronavirus cases till now.
The situation in rest of Andhra Pradesh, too, is alarming with three more deaths and 61 more positive cases being reported on Saturday, taking the total number of deaths to 31, the highest in South India and the total number of cases to 1016.
According an official bulletin released by the state medical and health department, said as many as 6,928 samples were tested in the state in the last 24 hours of which 61 samples tested positive for Covid-19, taking the total number of positive cases in the state to 1,016.
While Krishna district reported the maximum number of 25 cases since Friday afternoon till Saturday morning, Kurnool closely followed it with 14 cases, Anantapur with 5 cases, Kadapa and Nellore with four cases each, East Godavari and Guntur reported three cases each.
The bulletin said 26 persons were discharged in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of recovered patients to 171 and another 814 are still in hospital undergoing treatment.
Kurnool leads the tally with 275 cases followed by Guntur (209), Krishna (127), Chittoor (73), Nellore (72), Kadapa (55), Prakasam (53), Anantapur (51), West Godavari (39), East Godavari (31) and Visakhapatnam (22).
