Andhra government orders secretariat officials to attend duties amid lockdown relaxations

In an order issued on Sunday, the Andhra Pradesh government's chief secretary Nilam Sawhney made it clear that the assistant secretary and top officials should attend the functions of the secretariat every day in the wake of the lockdown rules were relaxed. Employees below the rank of Assistant Secretary must take measures to ensure that 33 percent of those departments attend.

The orders stated that the authority to relieve diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases, kidney chemotherapy, and immunosuppression is left to the Secretary of the Department. Pregnant employees are advised to stay home. Those attending to the duties should take steps to be safe. Meanwhile, the AP government on Sunday issued a decree of some kind of relaxation from Monday on the basis of containment clusters. The government has announced plans to tighten the measures at containment clusters.

Following the central government's guidelines to extend the lockdown rules till May, the state also extended the lockdown till May 17. However, the government has relaxed the rules as per the Red Zones, Green Zones, and orange zones respectively. In this backdrop, it has been given relaxation to several establishments provide they had to follow the social distancing and lockdown rules.

Meanwhile, 58 coronavirus positive cases were reported in Andhra Pradesh on Sunday taking the total number 1583 cases across the state. The Andhra Pradesh government released the Coronavirus Health Bulletin on Sunday afternoon 33 persons have reported being dead while 1062 patients currently receiving treatment in hospitals and 488 victims who were infected with the virus have recovered and discharged.