Covid: Telangana cross 80 lakh tests mark

Hyderabad, Feb 5 Telangana achieved a landmark in its fight against Covid-19 as the state crossed 80 lakh mark in the number of tests conducted so far.

With 37,387 tests conducted during the last 24 hours, the cumulative number reached 80,34,038.

According to the Director of Public Health and Family Welfare, the samples tested per million population has gone up to 2,15,852. This is against the daily testing target of 5,600 as per the World Health Organisation (WHO) benchmark of 140 tests per million per day.

The state has 20 government and 58 private laboratories conducting RT-PCR/CBNAAT/TRUENAT tests. There are 1,076 government-run centres for Rapid Antigen Testing.

During the last 24 hours, 33,215 samples were tested in government laboratories and remaining 4,172 in private laboratories.

The state health authorities, in their daily media bulletin, don't provide breakup of RT-PCR and Rapid Antigen tests.

Telangana was one of the states to come under flak initially for low testing. Following intervention by High Court, the authorities enhanced the number of tests.

The state reported 169 new Covid cases during the last 24 hours, taking the tally to 2,95,270. One more person succumbed to the virus to take the death toll to 1,607.

The fatality rate remained 0.54 per cent against the national average of 1.4 per cent. While 44.96 per cent of the deaths occurred due to Covid, 55.04 per cent had comorbidities.

A total of 189 people recovered from the virus, taking the cumulative number to 2,91,699.

The recovery rate improved further to 98.79 per cent against the national average of 97.1 per cent.

The active cases also dropped to 1,964, including 780 who are in home or institutional isolation.

Greater Hyderabad logged 31 cases. Medchal Malkajgiri reported 11 cases and Karimnagar 10 cases. No cases were reported in four districts while the daily count in remaining 26 districts was in single digits.

According to officials, 70 per cent of positive cases reported in the state so far were asymptomatic.

Over 92 per cent of the beds in hospitals treating Covid cases remained vacant. As many as 8,096 beds out of 8,577 beds in 62 government hospitals were vacant. Similarly, in 217 private hospitals, 6,984 out of 7,687 beds were vacant.

( With inputs from IANS )