Telangana’s Covid tally crosses 95,000-mark

Hyderabad, Aug 19 (IANS) Telangana’s Covid-19 tally crossed 95,000 on Wednesday with 1,763 more people testing positive for the virus.

The new cases during the last 24 hours pushed the tally to 95,700 while the death toll mounted to 719 with eight more deaths.

Of the new cases, 484 were reported from hotspot Greater Hyderabad. This was a big jump from 235 cases reported the previous day. The districts surrounding the state capital also reported over 300 cases. Medchal Malkajgiri reported 169 new cases, while Rangareddy saw 166 new cases. Sangareddy, another district which shares borders with Greater Hyderabad, reported 31 new cases.

According to a media bulletin issued by the office of the Director of Public Health and Family Welfare, infections were reported from all 33 districts. Outside Greater Hyderabad and surrounding districts, Warangal Urban remained the worst affected with 88 new cases followed by 65 in Nalgonda, 63 in Kamareddy and 61 in Jagtiyal.

Officials said the case fatality rate in the state stood at 0.75 per cent against the national average of 1.92 per cent. Out of the total fatalities, 53.87 per cent had co-morbidities.

The day also saw the recovery of 1,789 people, taking the total number of recoveries to 73,991. The state further improved the recovery rate to 77.31 per cent against the national average of 73.18 per cent.

The number of active cases in the state stands at 20,990 including 14,461 who were in home or institutional isolation.

The health authorities conducted 24,542 tests, the highest single-day number so far. With this, the state has tested 7,97,470 samples. The samples tested per million population are 21,480 against a daily testing target of 5,600 per day as per the World Health Organisation (WHO) benchmark of 140 per million per day. The results of 1,042 samples were awaited.

A total of 16 government and 23 private laboratories are conducting the RT-PCR/CBNAAT/TRUENAT types of tests while there are 1,076 rapid antigen tests centres. However, the authorities have not been providing breakup of the tests.

Age-wise Covid positive details show that 65.9 per cent of those tested positive were in the age group of 21-50 years. Terming this as a susceptible age group, authorities have urged them not to go out unless absolutely necessary. They were advised to strictly exercise precautions like wearing face masks and maintain physical distancing.

Among the Covid positive, 24.4 per cent are above 51 years of age. About 10 per cent were aged below 20 years.

Officials said 65.10 per cent of those tested positive were male, while the remaining 34.90 per cent were female.

According to the media bulletin, out of 20,396 beds in the government-run hospitals, 17,849 beds were vacant.

The authorities added 10 more private hospitals to the list of private facilities treating Covid patients. A total of 132 private hospitals treating Covid have a total of 7,855 beds and out of them 3,873 beds were vacant.

According to the media bulletin, the state has over 800 containment zones with the highest 125 in Ranga Reddy district, followed by 93 in Mahabubnagar, 81 in Rajanna Sircilla and 80 in Gadwal. Greater Hyderabad has 64 containment zones.

–IANS

ms/dpb