हिंदी ब्लॉग 
Hyderabad, Dec 22 (IANS) Telangana reported 617 new Covid-19 cases and three deaths during the last 24 hours, health officials said on Tuesday.
The fresh cases have taken the state's tally to 2,82,347 while the death toll has mounted to 1,518.
After the weekly drop in cases due to fewer tests conducted over the weekend, the cases surged again. The state had reported 316 cases on Monday.
Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) reported 103 new cases during the last 24 hours while the daily count in districts was in double or single digits.
Medchal Malkajgiri district saw the second highest number of new cases at 52 followed by Rangareddy (51), Warangal Urban (41), Karimnagar (41) and Khammam (32).
The recovery rate further imposed to 97.13 per cent with 635 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 2,74,260.
The state now has 6,569 active cases and of them 4,400 are in home or institutional isolation.
Of the 45,227 tests conducted during the last 24 hours, government-run laboratories accounted for 43,199 while remaining 2,028 samples were tested in private labs.
Samples tested per million population ratio rose further to 1,75,201.
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 1,076 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, 7,781 beds were vacant. A total of 778 people were undergoing treatment in these hospitals.
Similarly, in 219 private hospitals treating Covid, only 1,391 beds were occupied. Out of 7,939 beds, 6,548 were vacant.
--IANS
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