3 Years Of YS Jagan's Governance: How AP Govt Effectively Handled COVID Situation

Ever since YSRCP supremo YS Jagan Mohan Reddy took over as the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, he has been facing several challenges. COVID-19 pandemic was one of the dangerous phases that the entire world went through and it isn't over yet. Many people died due to COVID-19. The government of Andhra Pradesh effectively handled the COVID-19 pandemic despite many challenges. The state reported the lowest mortality rate in the country. A combination of proven methodologies, together with innovative strategies helped tackle COVID-19 outbreak.

Three-tier Structure:

A three-tier structure was implemented in the state for effective Covid management. In the three-tier structure, all the district collectors divided private hospitals which were allowed to treat Covid-19 patients into clusters and appointed an officer-in-charge for each of these clusters. Five to eight private hospitals were under each cluster.

A state level task force committee was constituted to monitor the effective functioning of the district level flying squads and cluster-level in-charges to review the complaints received on a regular basis. Special attention was paid to the maintenance of oxygen concentrators, D-type cylinders, and oxygen generation plants.

AP CM YS Jagan participated in Davos to take part in the World Economic Forum. Speaking at a panel discussion on 'future-proofing health system' during WEF annual meeting at Davos, YS Jagan said the government followed 3T strategy - tracing, testing, and treating - to contain the spread of coronavirus. In the last two years, 42 rounds of house to house surveys were conducted in the state to keep the mortality rate at 0.63 percent against the national average of over one percent.

He further stated that "With our limited resources, we did all we could. We were more focused on tracing, testing and treating. We were short on tertiary care. We were a newly formed state. We did not have tier-I cities like Hyderabad, Chennai or Bangalore where private investment is huge in super-specialty hospitals."

The state government has spent Rs. 4,031.31 crore for Covid-19 management including testing, contact tracing, and treatment in notified Covid hospitals and Covid Care Centres and vaccination. 

A whopping Rs. 2,119.29 crore was spent for procurement of drugs, medicines, consumables, and other personal protection equipment, Truenat machines,  procurement of ventilators, installation of oxygen pipelines and procurement of vaccines. A sum of Rs 197.48 crore was spent on the establishment of labs, procurement of lab reagents, kits, and HR at labs.

When the COVID-19 situation was at its peak, 649 government and private hospitals with 47,169 beds, including 6,493 ICU beds, 23,203 non-ICU oxygen beds and 17,474 non-ICU non-oxygen beds, offered treatment to patients in Andhra Pradesh. AP is the first state to include COVID-19 treatment in the list of illnesses covered under Dr. YSR Aarogyasri.

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