COVID19 racing through Telangana districts

There has been no let-up in the rising Covid-19 cases in Telangana with 1,593 fresh cases reported by the state government on Sunday. Eight more people have been declared dead from the disease taking the fatalities toll to 463 as on 8 p.m., Saturday evening. The total Covid-19 cases in the state have been put at 54,059 so far.

Even as GHMC area continued to register the most cases per day with 641 declared in the bulletin, it is the rest of Telangana that witnessed yet another surge with 952 of the cases reported coming from the districts. Warangal Urban district is fast emerging as one more hotspot for Covid-19 with 131 new cases, while Ranga Reddy district, that envelops Hyderabad city, recorded 171 fresh Coronavirus infections.

The past fortnight has witnessed urbanized areas in the districts other than Hyderbad as well as rural Telangana, contributing more and more to the ever increasing Covid-19 cases in the state.

Of the total 17,081 beds the government says it has for accommodating Covid-19 patients across the state, those available for occupancy, as on Saturday 8 p.m., fell to 14, 947 from 15,216 on Friday evening indicating that more of the Covid-19 patients may now be requiring hospitalization.

In yet another indication of possible severity of Coronavirus infections among the fresh cases being reported over the past few days, the health department, in its bulletin on Sunday said 1,190 beds with oxygen supply, and 317 ICU beds were occupied by patients as on Saturday evening. In comparison, on Friday, the number of people needing supplementary oxygen was 620 while the number of patients in ICUs was 235.

Interestingly, the bulletin which till Friday reported that the state had 471 ventilators in the government Covid-19 hospitals, on Sunday reported a dramatic increase in the ventilator numbers saying 1,117 were now available at these hospitals.

The data released on Sunday morning was on fresh Covid-19 cases whose test results came in the positive between 5 p.m. on Friday and 8 p.m. on Saturday. The state health department, which used to release the daily Covid-19 bulletin late in the evening every day, had announced on Saturday night that it was not releasing the bulletin on Saturday, and that it would issue the bulletin in a revised format on Sunday morning.