Covid-19 continues to plague small towns and villages in Andhra Pradesh

TIRUPATI: The second wave of Covid19 is receding. It is showing a declining trend in urban areas over the past few weeks, but a worrisome shift is evident – the virus spreading to semi-urban and rural areas.

District-level data shows that the pandemic continues to spread at a faster pace in small villages and small towns than in big cities of Andhra Pradesh. This is particularly so in the Chittoor district. The urban areas have borne the brunt of the first wave last year, but they now account for only a quarter of the new cases.

The surge in the number of positive cases in rural areas is reflected in the pandemic statistics from the district administration. The urban areas in Chittoor district have contributed a little over 26.5 per cent of new infections from June 10-16, as against 73.5 per cent by the rural and semi-urban areas.

In total, the district has reported nearly 7,075 new cases during the past seven days, of which 5,198 cases were recorded in rural and semi-urban areas and 1,877 in urban areas.

Epidemiologists and health experts are concerned over the fact that

around 73.5 per cent of the Covid cases was registered between June 10 and 16 were from rural areas.

The data shows that the rural areas in the district contributed 804 cases out of the total 1,042 cases on June 10, followed by 988 of the 1396 cases on June 11; 840 of the 1,199 cases on June 12; some 713 of the 968 cases on June 13; 684 of the 860 cases on the 14th, 606 of the 830 cases on the 15th and 563 of the 780 cases on the 16th.

The urban areas recorded 238, 408, 359, 255, 176, 224 and 217 cases between June 10 and 16.

District collector Hari Narayanan said the mandal-level task force will take special steps to ensure that fever survey, testing, quarantine, isolation etc are done at all the mandals that are contributing the highest number of Covid cases.

“Of the 4,52,710 tests conducted in the district from May to June 12, as many as 87,910 tested positive. At present, there are over 12,000 active cases in the district and the positivity rate is at a high of 14 per cent,” he said.

The authorities are taking steps to control the spread and special focus has been laid on mandals with more than 10 per cent test positivity rate.