Telangana crosses one lakh COVID tests per million population

 Telangana | Written by : IANS Updated: Fri, Oct 16, 2020, 03:40 PM

Hyderabad, Oct 16 (IANS) With 43,916 more tests conducted in the last 24 hours, Telangana has crossed the one-lakh COVID tests per million population and become the seventh Indian state to achieve the milestone, officials said on Friday.

The state's figure is 1,00,670 samples tested per million population. The national average is 65,772.

Delhi tops the list of states with 1,93,399 tests per million population.

The Telangana government initially came under a lot of criticism for not doing enough tests, but ramped up the numbers subsequently.

The state is currently conducting 40,000-50,000 tests a day which, officials say, is much higher than the daily target of 5,600 per day and the World Health Organisation (WHO) benchmark of 140 tests per million per day.

The state has so far conducted 37,46,963 tests. There was no data available as to how many of them were Rapid Antigen tests.

The state has 17 government-run laboratories, 44 private laboratories and 1,076 Rapid Antigen test centres.

Out of 43,916 tests conducted during the last 24 hours ending 8 pm on Thursday, 41,698 were conducted in government laboratories and Rapid Antigen test centres.

The state reported 1,554 new cases, taking its tally to 2,19,224. Of these 23,203 are active, including 19,251 persons in home isolation.

As many as 1,435 people recovered from the virus during the period, taking the total recoveries to 1,94,653.

The state's recovery rate climbed further to 88.79 per cent as against the national average of 87.5 per cent.

Seven more people succumbed to the virus during the period, pushing the death toll to 1,256.

The fatality rate remains at 0.57 per cent as against the national average of 1.5 per cent.

Officials said the percentage of deaths due to COVID-19 was 44.96 while remaining 55.04 had comorbidities.

The Public Health and Family Welfare Director's office said that out of 2,19,224 cases so far, 70 per cent (1,53,457) were asymptomatic while remaining 30 per cent (65,767) were symptomatic.

The data shows that 63.9 per cent of positive cases are in the age group of 21-50, 22.91 per cent above 51, and 13.18 per cent below 20.

Officials said 64.64 per cent of positive cases were males and remaining 38.37 per cent females.

Of the new cases registered during last 24 hours, Greater Hyderabad accounted for 249 cases, followed by Rangareddy district (128), Medchal Malkajgiri (118), Bhadradri Kothagudem (95), Khammam (88), Karimnagar (84), ,Nalgonda (79) and Siddipet (49).