Partial curfew from tomorrow

Shops to close at 12 noon, prohibitory orders in place

The State government has decided to impose a partial curfew for 14 days starting from Wednesday.

Chief Minister Y.S Jagan Mohan Reddy took the decision at a review meeting COVID, vaccination, Nadu-Nedu (health) and YSR Kanti Velugu at the Camp Office on Monday.

All the shops shall be open only from 6 a.m. to 12 noon with Section 144 in force. Only emergency services will be allowed from thereon. The decision was taken in view of the spike in new infections in the second wave of the pandemic and to ensure that economic activity was not hit.

The Chief Minister directed the officials to focus on identifying the primary contacts at the earliest possible, by conducting tests. He instructed the authorities to see that there was no shortage of doctors and para-medical personnel in the government empanelled hospitals. Mr. Jagan directed that all hospitals should have enough oxygen supplies, in worse cases he told the authorities to import oxygen and make suitable arrangements to store it, stating that no hospital should report oxygen shortage.

The officials informed that so far, 1.66 crore tests had been conducted across the State at an average rate of 3.10 lakh tests per month. There were currently 558 COVID hospitals, with 44,599 beds, of which 37,760 were occupied with COVID patients. Besides these, around 3,597 patients were being treated on ventilators, and 1,01,204 were in home isolation.

As on date, there were 41,780 beds in 81 COVID Care Centers (CCCs), of which 9,937 patients had received treatment till May 2, officials said. Also, nearly 31,843 beds were still available at CCC’s, said the officials, adding that a large number of calls were coming to104 call centre.

Oxygen facilities

The officials said oxygen facilities were available in 146 hospitals and there were 26,446 beds with an oxygen pipeline in those hospitals. They said 420 to 500 metric tonnes of oxygen was being used on an average daily and it was estimated that the usage may increase by the end of the second week of May. While 480 tonnes of oxygen was allotted for Andhra Pradesh, only 448 tonnes (including government and private hospitals) was being used due to lack of tankers for transportation of oxygen, the officials said.

The officials said they had requested the Centre to increase supply of oxygen to the State keeping in view the increasing demand, and added that they had requested to supply 200 metric tonnes of oxygen each from Perambadur (Tamil Nadu) and Ballari (Karnataka) and also to provide tankers for transportation of oxygen

The officials said eight lakh Remedsiver injections were ordered from Mylan lab and added that 5.6 lakh N-95 masks,7.76 lakh PPE kits, 35.46 lakh surgical masks, 2,04960 isolation kits were available.

The officials informed the Chief Minister that the first dose of vaccine was administered to 52 lakh people above 45 years, and 1.33 crore people were yet to get vaccinated.

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