Telangana’s Covid test record worst among states

New Delhi: Telangana reported the second highest Covid-19 positivity rate in the country last week when the state high court had pulled up the state government for low testing.Meanwhile, the testing data of states with high positivity rate between May 26 and June 1 reveal that Telangana had also conducted the least number of tests among them — an issue of major concern now at the Centre. A data assessment by the central government between May 26 and June 1 shows Telangana’s positivity rate at 20.2% is second only to Delhi. While Delhi recorded a rate of 25.7%, it has also simultaneously kept its testing rate high — it conducted more than 37,000 tests during May 26-June 1 from which nearly 9,600 turned out to be positive. The number of overall testing done in the Capital is over 2.23 lakh as on date.Telangana, on the other hand, conducted just about 4,300 tests in the same week. As per covid19india.org, the state has conducted a little over 23,300 tests so far, with no ramp up at all over the last two weeks.ET gathers that the Centre has strongly and repeatedly taken up the issue of “high positive rate-low testing” with the state government. This scenario, it fears, could lead to a sudden surge in positive numbers besides a large spread of the disease. A similar issue was raised about West Bengal initially.ET had reported that the central government first flagged its concerns to Telangana in early May.The situation in the state’s capital city of Hyderabad is also a cause for worry. Hyderabad was among the top 25 districts in the country with an overall positivity rate of 8.3% as recorded until May 22. Officials said there were no signs of improvement since.Maharashtra had conducted the highest number of tests last week at over 93,000 against a positivity rate of 19.8%, followed by Tamil Nadu, which conducted more than 91,600 tests with 10.3% of those returning positive. Gujarat is beginning to improve on its low testing rate.

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