Amaravati: Andhra Pradesh crossed a major milestone on Sunday as it completed one crore sample tests for coronavirus even as the active caseload in the state fell below 10,000 for the first time in close to five months.
The state saw the addition of 620 fresh COVID-19 cases, taking the gross positives to 8,67,683, a health bulletin said.
AP has vastly ramped up its testing capacities and over the last four months has been conducting an average of over 50,000 tests per day, majority being RT-PCR tests.
At 1,87,587 tests per million population, AP leads the major states in the country and has so far completed screening a gross of 1,00,17,126 samples till date, the bulletin said.
The one crore-plus tests turned out an overall infection positivity rate of 8. 66 per cent, against the national average of 6.73 per cent.
After a long time, 3,787 patients were reported cured in 24 hours ending 9 am on Sunday, thereby pushing the overall recoveries so far to 8,52,298.
Another seven patients succumbed in 24 hours, taking the toll to 6,988, the ulletin said.
The recovery rate shot up significantly to 98.23 per cent from 97.86 per cent in a day.
The mortality rate remained stable at 0.81 per cent.
In 24 hours, West Godavari reported 107 and Guntur 101 fresh cases of COVID-19 while Krishna added 85 and Chittoor 64.
The remaining nine districts added less than 50 new cases each.
State topper East Godavari district reported less than 50 fresh cases on Sunday for the first time in four months.
It also saw 2,755 recoveries in a day, taking down the active caseload to 1,190 from 3,945.
East Godavaris COVID-19 chart now showed 1,22,246 total positives, 1,20,420 recoveries and 636 deaths.
Now, only Guntur (1,301) and Krishna (1,387) districts have active cases in four digits, along with East Godavari, while the remaining ten districts have less than 1,000 each.
In fact, three districts have less than 200 active cases each.
In 24 hours, Krishna and Visakhapatnam reported two fresh coronavirus fatalities each while Chittoor, Guntur and West Godavari added one each to their tally.