Hyderabad, July 4 The COVID-19 cases in Telangana crossed 22,000 mark on Saturday with 1,850 people testing positive during the last 24 hours, health officials said.
For a second consecutive day, Telangana reported over 1,800 coronavirus cases. With a record single-day spike in cases, the state on Friday crossed 20,000 mark, overtaking both Rajasthan and West Bengal in terms of total number of infections so far.
With Saturday's figure, the state's tally mounted to 22,312.
Telangana also reported five deaths, taking the death toll to 288.
Of the new cases recorded on Friday, hotspot Greater Hyderabad alone recorded 1,572 cases.
According to the health department, 6,427 samples were tested during the last 24 hours. This is the highest number of tests to be conducted in a single day. With this the state has so far conducted over 1.10 lakh tests.
Telangana also saw 1,342 people recovering from the disease. Officials said the cumulative figure of recoveries mounted to 11,537.
A total of 10,487 people are undergoing treatment in hospitals or at home.
Meanwhile, Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar said the state has ramped up COVID-19 testing facilities.
He told Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba during the latter's video conference with all the state chief secretaries that after the Central team's visit to Telangana, the state ramped up testing facilities and working on enforcing surveillance in containment zones.
The Cabinet Secretary underlined that the focus should be on keeping the number of deaths as low as possible. The Chief Secretaries should personally review and take stock of the personal protection equipment, availability of N95 masks, clinical management and other infrastructural issues, he said.
Meanwhile, Director of Public Health and Family Welfare, G. Srinivas Rao said currently 13 laboratories were conducting daily 6,500 tests while five more laboratories would start conducting the tests soon.
The official said 13 private laboratories were issued notices for discrepancies in the testing data.
He said the private labs had the capacity to conduct 8,000 tests every day and some of them were doing more tests than their capacity which could have led to discrepancies.
The official said the COVID-19 patients were undergoing treatment in Gandhi Hospital, Fever Hospital, King Koti Hospital and Chest Hospital, all in Hyderabad. Critical patients were being treated in Gandhi Hospital.
The hospitals have 2,501 beds and of them 1,034 were occupied.
As many as 6,556 people who tested positive were in home isolation and they were being treated through telemedicine.
( With inputs from IANS )