Telangana shows dip in COVID-19 cases, albeit with poor rates of testing

HYDERABAD: Telangana's poor rates of testing are making the Centre think that cases are decreasing in the State. On Monday, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare tweeted information of the plateauing/decrease of daily new cases in Telangana.

However, a glance at the daily bulletin shows that Telangana struggled to maintain the prescribed testing levels. On Sunday, the State detected 5,695 cases of COVID-19 after conducting only 58,742 tests. The Test Positivity Rate (TPR) of the State is currently at 10.39 per cent. On the same day, 49 individuals died due to the virus.

The highest caseload in the State was from GHMC with 1,352 cases, followed by Rangareddy with 483 cases and Medchal with 427 cases. Warangal Urban district, which recently saw the conclusion of the municipal elections, had 393 cases, the fourth worst in the State.

Meanwhile, testing continues to be a contentious issue with per day testing per Primary Health Centre (PHC) reduced to 100. Across the whole of last week, the State has merely tested between 50,000-70,000 individuals per day.