Amaravati: Riding high on the second wave to a new peak, Andhra Pradesh on Friday crossed the one million COVID-19 cases mark as a new record 11,766 were added afresh in a day.
AP became the fifth state in the country, behind topper Maharashtra, Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, to aggregate over 10 lakh coronavirus cases so far.
The state’s cumulative positives now stood at 10,09,228 from over 1.58 crore tests, a health department bulletin said.
The last lakh cases came in 24 days after the state logged nine lakh on March 30 this year.
It took 158 days for the state to reach nine lakh total cases after it touched the eight-lakh mark on October 23 last year, the longest period since the outbreak of the pandemic.
It took 137 days for AP to log the first one lakh COVID-19 cases from March 12, 2020 when the first case was reported.
The second and the third lakh came in a span of 11 days each and the next three lakh cases, in intervals of 10 days each.
The state went from six to seven lakh cases in 14 days and from seven to eight in the next 22 days, when the first peak hit in August-September last year.
But the pace of the contagions spread slowed considerably after November last and at one stage in February, the state appeared to be heading towards a nil balance sheet with the overall active caseload dipping to a low of about 300.
On February 15, the state added only 30 fresh cases, the lowest in a day in more than 10 months. But the infection rate started peaking from March as the second wave hit the state, along with other parts of the country.
Meanwhile, the bulletin said that in 24 hours ending 9 am on Friday, 45,581 tests turned out 11,766 COVID-19 positives in the state, a record new high in a day after the 10,830 on August 26 last year.
Also, 4,441 patients recovered while another 38 succumbed in 24 hours, it said.
The active caseload jumped to 74,231 after a total of 9,27,418 recoveries and 7,579 deaths.
Chittoor district reported a staggering 1,885 fresh cases, including 855 in temple-town Tirupati.
Guntur added 1,593, Anantapuramu 1,201, Kurnool 1,180 and Srikakulam 1,052 new cases, while the remaining eight registered between 190 and 949 cases each.
Kurnool became the eighth district in the state to log 70,000-plus coronavirus cases so far.
SPS Nellore district reported six, Chittoor five, East Godavari, Krishna, Kurnool, Prakasam and Srikakulam four each, Visakhapatnam three, Guntur and Vizianagaram two fresh fatalities each on Friday.