Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy on Friday said the state managed to reasonably weather the Covid storm despite lacking medically well-equipped cities such as Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai.

“The state has managed reasonably well in fighting against the pandemic despite lack of modern medical facilities as in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and Chennai,” he said at a Covid review, through video conferencing, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and thanked him for the support extended to southern state.

The Chief Minister highlighted that the grassroots governance system of ward and village volunteers has played a crucial role in effectively containing the pandemic.

Using this system, he said fever surveys were conducted as many as 12 times and focused on testing people with symptoms.

According to the Chief Minister, vaccination is the only solution for coronavirus and he informed the Prime Minister that AP received over 1.68 crore vaccine doses, which were used to vaccinate 1.76 crore people.

For July, Andhra has been allotted 53 lakh vaccine doses, out of which 17.7 lakh doses were supplied to private hospitals.

As private hospitals could only utilise 4.2 lakh doses in June, and failed to exhaust their allotted quota, the Chief Minister asked the Prime Minister to allot the remaining stock in private hospitals to the government to help to increase the vaccination process.