Telangana's Covid tests cross 40 lakh-mark

 Telangana | Written by : IANS Updated: Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 12:42 PM

Hyderabad, Oct 23 (IANS) In its fight against Covid-19, Telangana crossed a milestone on Friday with 40 lakh tests, health officials said.

During the last 24 hours, the state conducted 38,484 tests taking the cumulative number of tests to 40,17,353.

Eighteen government-run laboratories, 46 private laboratories and 1,076 Rapid Antigen test centres are conducting the tests.

According to a bulletin released by the director of public health, out of 38,484 samples tested during the last 24 hours, 36,294 samples were tested in the government-run laboratories and 2,190 in private.

Of the total samples 16,933 were primary and 4,618 were secondary.

The authorities, however, released no data as to how many of the total tests conducted so far were Rapid Antigen Tests.

Samples tested per million population ratio rose further to 1,07,935.

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.

Meanwhile, the state reported 1,421 new cases, taking the overall tally to 2,29,001.

Of this only 20,377 cases are active, including 17,214 who are in home or institutional isolation.

Six more persons succumbed to the virus during the last 24 hours ending 8 p.m. Thursday, pushing the death toll to 1,298.

The fatality stands at 0.56 per cent against the national average of 1.5 per cent.

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

A total of 1,221 people recovered from the infection, taking the cumulative recoveries to 2,07,326.

The state's recovery stands at 90.53 per cent as against the national average of 89.5 per cent.

The declining trend in new infections continued both in the state capital and the districts.

Greater Hyderabad reported 249 new cases. Medchal Malkajgiri recorded the second highest number of cases at 111 followed by Rangareddy (97), Khammam (89), Bhadradri Kothagudem (86), Nalgonda (79) and Karimnagar.

Out of 2,29,001 total positive cases so far, 70 per cent (1,60,301) were asymptomatic while the remaining 30 per cent (68,700) were symptomatic.