HYDERABAD: Telangana crossed the 16,000-mark on Tuesday by recording 945 new COVID-19 cases. The State’s total caseload now stands at 16,339, of which 8,785 are active. Also, seven persons died of the disease on the day, taking the toll to 260.
Tuesday saw major progress in terms of discharges, with 1,712 patients cured of COVID-19. A total of 7,294 patients have been discharged so far. The highest number of cases were reported from the GHMC limits with 869 cases, followed by Rangareddy at 29 and Sangareddy at 21.
Testing still low
Meanwhile, despite the Centre asking the State to ramp up testing on Monday after a team of delegates from the Union Health Ministry visited Hyderabad, there is no change in the situation. On Tuesday, only 3,457 tests were conducted and this is after the government paused the testing.
Other State with numbers as high are conducting about 10,000 tests. For instance, Karnataka tested 12,000 people in the last 24 hours, Andhra Pradesh 30,000 and Rajasthan 9,000. These States are also around the 16,000-19,000 mark, similar to Telangana.
The situation is so poor that a leading private laboratory, which has three COVID-19 labs in Hyderabad, said it has stopped testing till July 5 due to the high number of samples collected.
This is possibly because of the rush at private labs as the government withheld tests for five days.