The number of COVID-19 cases in Telangana crossed 1 lakh on Friday. With 2,474 new cases on August 21, the total stood at 1,01,865. The first case in the State was detected on March 2. While the first 10,000 cases were recorded in 115 days (March 2-June 24), 90,000 more cases were recorded in 58 days.
The last set of 10,000 cases leading to one lakh mark were recorded in seven days (August 15-21). A total of 1,58,738 tests were performed in this duration. There are two prime reasons for the rapid increase in cases from third week of June. The first is relaxation of lockdown from beginning of June which led to increased movement of people, and subsequent increase in transmission of the virus. However, low number of tests were conducted till mid-June, drawing all-round criticism.
The second reason is increase in testing from June 15 in government laboratories, and permission to private labs to conduct tests. After the tests were increased, more cases are being detected. Till June 15, less than 250 cases were being recorded per day. By the end of the month, around 1,000 cases were logged on a daily basis.
While it took 115 days to record the first 10,000 cases, it took less than 10 days to detect each of the next nine sets of 10,000 cases till one lakh. Of those, 22,908 are active while 80,586 have recovered, and 755 have died.
The State ranks ninth in terms of total cases across the country. Senior officials from the State Health department earlier said that the cases in GHMC will come down by the end of August while cases will continue to increase in other districts only to decrease by end of September.
40k tests a day
The 2,474 cases detected on August 21 are highest in a day till date. One of the reasons could be further spike in the number of tests. While around 23,000 samples were tested in a day till August 20, it shot to 43,095 on August 21. And on the following day (August 22), 40,666 tests were conducted, leading to the detection of 2,384 cases.
Of those new cases, 472 are from Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC), 148 from Nizamabad, 137 from Nalgonda, 131 from Rangareddy, 120 from Karimnagar, 110 from Suryapet, 105 each in Khammam and Jagtial. This clearly indicates that the cases are continuing to surge in districts other than in urban localities.
