The dreaded Coronavirus has struck the Andhra Pradesh secretariat with one of its employees, along with two others in a different official complex in Guntur, testing positive for the virus.
On Monday, two blocks of the state Secretariat were shut while the entire Secretariat building was being sanitised. Employees who work there were asked not to come to the office.
The State Secretariat employee, who worked in the agriculture department, had returned to Andhra from Hyderabad last week.
Meanwhile, 105 new Covid-19 cases were reported in Andhra on Monday, taking the overall tally to 3,674. Two deaths were reported from Kurnool district, taking the Covid-19 toll in the state to 64.
A Class IV employee belonging to the agriculture department, tested positive for Covid-19 and was shifted to the Vijayawada hospital for treatment. He is learnt to have carried files between Block-3 and 4 of the Secretariat.
Both the blocks have been shut for sanitisation and the employees’ association has asked the government to allow the employees in these blocks to work from home. For next two days, they were asked not to come to the offices.
Apart from the Secretariat employee, two other Class IV employees, working in the department of cooperation at Chittigunta of Guntur, also tested positive for Covid-19 and were shifted to hospital for treatment.
On Wednesday, around 250 government employees, stranded in Hyderabad since the beginning of the lockdown, returned to AP in special buses arranged by the APSRTC. As part of the mandatory health protocol, they were all tested for Covid-19. On Friday, three of them, including a Secretariat employee, tested positive.
The medical and health department authorities identified primary contacts of these three employees and shifted them to various quarantine centres.