AP Guv tests negative for coronavirus

: After four of his staff

members tested positive for COVID-19 two days ago, Andhra Pradesh Governor Biswabhusan Harichandan on Tuesday tested negative for the virus, Special Chief Secretary (Health) K S Jawahar Reddy said.

At the daily media briefing on Covid-19 along with Information Commissioner T Vijay Kumar Reddy, the Special Chief Secretary said the First Lady also tested negative.

The Governor's Chief Security Officer, a staff nurse and two attendants in the Raj Bhavan tested positive two days ago.

Following this, the Governor and his spouse were also screened and the tests showed no infection.

The Special Chief Secretary said, in all 31 frontline medical staff contracted the disease across the state in the last few days.

 

"There are 12 doctors, 12 nursing staff, two pharmacists and five sanitation staff tested positive and are under treatment," he added.

Referring to the spurt in coronavirus cases in the state in the last few days, Jawahar Reddy said it was due to local transmission.

"About 80-90 per cent of the new cases are from the containment clusters.

Of the 82 new cases reported in the last 24 hours, 75 are from the old clusters and only seven are in the new.

We are investigating the cause of the disease spread in these new clusters," he said.

He, however, said there was no cause for concern as the 'positivity rate' was just 1.57 per cent as against the national average of 4.13 per cent.

Also, the cases doubling time was 9.8 days in AP compared to 8.5 days in the country.

"More number of positive cases are surfacing as we are conducting higher number of tests.

We have also stepped up community surveillance in the COVID-19 affected clusters and hence more cases are getting detected," Jawahar Reddy pointed out.

With 1,504 tests per million population, Andhra Pradesh was leading all states in the country in conducting the COVID-19 tests, the Special Chief Secretary said.