Hyd's daily Covid count drops below 100

Hyderabad, Dec 21 For the first time in more than six months, the daily Covid-19 count in Greater Hyderabad has dropped below 100.

Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) reported 86 new cases during the last 24 hours, health officials said on Monday.

The Telangana capital witnessed an upsurge in the infections in early June and the daily count at one point had crossed 900. The cases, however, were on decline since September.

Meanwhile, the state reported 316 new cases during the last 24 hours, ending 8 p.m. Sunday. The cumulative tally rose to 2,81,730.

The daily count in most of the districts remained in single digits. Rangareddy district saw the second highest number of new cases at 30 followed by Medchal Malkajgiri (22), Warangal Urban (18) and Karimnagar (18).

The weekly drop in tests also led to a fall in the new positive cases.

The recovery rate further imposed to 97.12 per cent with 612 more people recovering from the virus.

The state continues to see more recoveries than daily count of new cases. With the latest recoveries, the cumulative number rose to 2,73,625.

Two more persons succumbed to the virus during the same period, pushing the death toll to 1,515.

The state's Covid fatality rate remains at 0.53 per cent against the national average of 1.5 per cent. According to the director of public health and family welfare, 44.96 per cent of the deaths were due to Covid while the remaining 55.04 were on account of comorbidities.

The state now has 6,590 active cases and of them 4,467 are in home or institutional isolation.

Of the 32,714 tests conducted during the last 24 hours, government-run laboratories accounted for 30,269 while remaining 2,445 samples were tested in private labs.

Samples tested per million population ratio rose further to 1,73,986.

The daily testing target for the state is 5,600 per day as per the World Health Organisation (WHO) benchmark of 140 per million per day, officials said

Eighteen government-run laboratories, 56 private laboratories and 1076 Rapid Antigen test centres are conducting the tests in the state.

The data shows that 63.9 per cent of those tested positive so far were aged between 21-50 years. As many as 22.91 per cent were aged above 51 years. The positive cases include 13.18 per cent who were below 20 years.

Of the total cases, 60.44 per cent were male and 39.37 per cent female.

Over 90 per cent of beds in government-run and private hospitals treating Covid-19 in the state remained vacant.

Out of 8,559 beds available in 61 government hospitals treating Covid, 7,786 beds were vacant. A total of 773 people were undergoing treatment in these hospitals.

Similarly, in 219 private hospitals treating Covid, only 1,350 beds were occupied. Out of 7,915 beds, 6,565 were vacant.

( With inputs from IANS )