Hyderabad emerges epicentre of Covid surge in Telangana

Hyderabad: Covid-19 cases have begun surging in Telangana, and if the overnight doubling of cases is any indication, then the state appears to be falling headlong into the third wave of Covid. On Tuesday, Telangana reported 1,052 new Covid cases, a very steep climb up from 482 it saw on Monday, the state health department said.

Hyderabad city has firmly established itself yet again as the epicentre of Covid spread with new daily cases rocketing up from 294 on Monday to 659 on Tuesday.

Whether this severe surge in cases is being driven by the Omicron variant of the Coronavirus has not been made clear by the Director of Public Health & Family Welfare Dr G. Srinivasa Rao who had earlier said the Telangana health department would not make any distinction in Covid cases caused by different variants of the Coronavirus, because no matter what the variant that infected a person, it still caused Covid-19, for which treatment remained the same across variants.

However, the Omicron variant spreads anywhere from four to six times faster than the previous variants of the Coronavirus, making Omicron a force to contend with, despite assurances by the state health officials that it causes only mild symptoms in a few, and does not exhibit any symptoms in 90 per cent of the people it infects. However, the cause for concern on this front, according to health officials, is that these 90 per cent of asymptomatic Covid infected persons can spread it to the 10 per cent of the very vulnerable among the population, especially the elderly, and those who already suffer from other serious health conditions, complicating their health, and possibly resulting in requiring serious hospital care.

Incidentally, on Tuesday, one in 35 people whose test results were available tested positive for Covid-19 in Telangana. On January 1, only one in 83 people whose test results were available had tested positive for the disease in the state.

More than doubling of daily cases overnight were also reported on Tuesday from Medchal-Malkajgiri district where cases rose from 48 on Monday to 116 on Tuesday, and in Ranga Reddy district where Tuesday’s cases were pegged at 109, up from 55 on Monday.

 All it took for the more than doubling of state-wide cases, as well as in Hyderabad, was a modest increase in the number of tests overnight. On Monday, the health department reported a total of 38,362 tests, while on Tuesday it reported a total of 42,991 Covid-19 tests in the state, an overnight increase of just 3,629 tests. When taken into consideration the actual tests for which results were available on both days, the increase effectively falls to 2,386, and the increase by 570 cases since Monday shows that Covid is firmly back in Hyderabad and the rest of Telangana.

Along with the rise in cases, the health department said the number of active cases too increased from 4,048 on Monday to 4,858 on Tuesday, while hospitalisation stood at 1,247 on Tuesday, compared to 1,212 on Monday.