Amaravati, Aug 20 (IANS): The Covid-19 death toll in Andhra Pradesh crossed the 3,000 mark on Thursday after 95 people succumbed to the disease, said a health official in a statement.
The death toll mounted to 3,001, while the state's Covid cases tally rose to 3,25,396.
Andhra Pradesh became the fifth state in the country to cross the 3,000 death toll. The state is already the third worst affected state after Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu in terms of the number of Covid-19 cases.
The mortality rate in Andhra Pradesh is 0.92 per cent against the national average of 1.90 per cent.
Officials said the state's mortality rate is much lower than that of Gujarat (3.46 per cent) and Maharashtra (3.35).
According to a statement by the State Command Control Room, 16 fatalities were reported from Chittoor district. 11 people succumbed in Praksam district, 9 in Nellore, 8 each in Anantapur, East Godavari and West Godavari districts, 7 in Kadapa, 6 each in Guntur, Kurnool and Visakhapatnam, 5 in Srikakulam, 3 in Vizianagaram and 2 in Krishna district.
During the last 24 hours, East Godavari district reported the maximum 1,357 cases . As many as 995 new cases were reported from West Godavari, 985 in Visakhapatnam, 973 in Anantapur, 836 in Chittoor and 805 in Kurnool.
The period also saw 8,846 people recovering from the virus. With this the cumulative recoveries rose to 2,35,218. The recovery rate in the state has now gone up to 72.29 per cent against the national average of 73.91 per cent.
The state now has 87,177 active cases with maximum 16, 065 active cases in East Godavari, followed by 9,520 in Chittoor, 7,477 in Guntur and 6,925 in Vizianagaram.
During the last 24 hours ending 9 a.m. on Thursday, the authorities conducted 55,551 tests including 35,310 VRDL/Truenat/NACO and 20,241 rapid antigen tests. With this the state has so far tested 30,74,847 samples.
Andhra Pradesh stands fourth after Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra in the number of tests. However, it ranks first in terms of tests per million with a figure of 57,581. With 10.58 per cent positivity rate, it fares better than states like Maharashtra (18.80 per cent) , Karnataka (11.36) and Telangana (12).