The surge in coronavirus cases continued in Telangana on Friday too with another 985 positive cases reported on the day, just 15 shy of hitting the 1,000 mark for a day. The total positive cases has gone up to 12,349 with seven more deaths reported during the day including that of a head nurse of a government hospital taking the total fatalities to 237 so far.
A total of 4,374 samples were tested for coronavirus on Friday with 3,389 of them testing negative. With the discharge of another 78 patients, the total number of persons discharged has also increased to 4,766 with 7,436 remaining active cases.
According to a bulletin issued by the Directorate of Public Health and Family Welfare, 774 of the positive cases reported on Friday are from the GHMC limits, keeping it a hotspot for the continuing spread of COVID-19 in the State. Neighbouring Rangareddy and Medchal districts have also reported high number of cases with 86 and 53, respectively, followed by 20 more in Warangal Urban district. Another 14 districts reported single-digit positive cases during the day.
Among those succumbed to coronavirus infection in the State on Friday is the Head Nurse of the Govt. General and Chest Hospital at Erragadda here, Victoria Jayamani (58). She succumbed while undergoing treatment in Gandhi General Hospital (GGH). According to Superintendent of the Chest Hospital Dr. Mahabub Khan, the Head Nurse was on medical leave for the last 20 days and said that she might have contracted coronavirus during her leave period.
She got admitted herself to the Chest Hospital with serious respiratory problems earlier this week but she was shifted to GGH for ventilator support, where she succumbed. She was due for retirement at the month-end. Her husband also tested positive for coronavirus and is in home isolation.
Meanwhile, Minister for Health Eatala Rajender along with officials of DPH held a review meeting with representatives of private labs permitted to conduct COVID-19 tests. The meeting was informed that four teams comprising senior micro biologists and senior officers of the Health Department inspected all the 16 private laboratories.
After examining various aspects like infrastructure, human resources, infection control measures and other facilities including general hygiene in the private labs, the inspection teams submitted a report to the government. An expert committee, after going through the report, expressed suspicion that pool testing was being done in some labs resulting in some negative samples too being shown as positive in the absence of individual sample testing.
According to officials, the committee has also suspected the possibility of contamination of samples leading to high positivity rate among the samples tested in private labs. The panel observed that safety measures and other protocols were not being followed meticulously in some private labs.
