HYDERABAD:  Sixty-five per cent of all Covid-19 cases in Telangana in 24 hours ending 8 pm on Sunday were from non-GHMC limits, according to a medical bulletin released by the Health Department on Monday.The bulletin said that of the 1,473 new cases reported, only 506 cases were from the GHMC limits and the remaining 967 cases were from other districts. The statewide cumulative number of cases has now gone up to 55,532.

The worst-affected among the districts were Warangal Urban and Karimnagar with 111 and 91 cases respectively. Meanwhile, Rangareddy reported 168 cases. The situation is worsening in Sangareddy where 98 cases were reported. Nirmal and Peddapalli are the only districts with no fresh cases reported on the day.

This comes as a disconcerting trend because districts have just one or two hospitals as isolation centres to tackle Covid cases. For instance, Nizamabad has just two hospitals, the government hospital and area hospital in Bodhan, with no support from private hospitals. Nizamabad recorded 41 cases in a single day.

Drop in testsMeanwhile, there was a sharp decline in number of tests conducted even as the situation in the districts started causing concerns. During the last fortnight, on an average 15,000 tests were conducted per day but that number dropped to 9,817 on the day. 

In fact, the Central Health Ministry called up the Health Secretaries and the Chief Secretaries of nine States last week, including that of Telangana, and asked them to ramp up testing and also enforce containment plans. The ministry advised a door-to-door testing protocol to track, trace and treat the patients.

Even though the bulletin claims that the present testing is localised to the UPHC level, each of which covers 50,000 to 60,000 population,  several of these UPHCs have not received the rapid antigen test (RAT)kits to conduct the tests.