Telangana’s Covid-19 tally crossed 2.80 lakh on Friday with 551 new cases reported during the last 24 hours, health officials said.

With the death of another person due to Covid, the death toll mounted to 1,506.

The state’s Covid fatality rate remains at 0.53 per cent against the national average of 1.5 per cent. According to the director of public health and family welfare, 44.96 per cent of the deaths were due to Covid while the remaining 55.04 were on account of comorbidities.

The state continues to record more number of recoveries than new cases. A total of 682 people recovered from the virus, taking the cumulative numbers to 2,71,649.

The recovery rate improved further to 96.94 per cent against the national average of 95.4 per cent.

The state now has 7,040 active cases and of them 4,955 are in home or institutional isolation.

Over 90 per cent of beds in the government-run and private hospitals treating Covid-19 in the state remained vacant.

Out of 8,561 beds available in 61 government hospitals treating Covid, 7,821 beds were vacant. A total of 740 people were undergoing treatment in these hospitals.

Similarly, in 220 private hospitals treating Covid, only 1,345 beds were occupied. Out of 7,920 beds, 6,575 were vacant.

Of the new cases reported during the last 24 hours, Greater Hyderabad accounted for 111. The daily count in districts remained in single or double digits. Rangareddy district saw the second highest number of new cases at 48 followed by Medchal Malkajgiri (42), Warangal Urban (31), Karimnagar (24) and Sangareddy (23).

Of the 47,991 tests conducted during the last 24 hours, government-run laboratories accounted for 44,366 while the remaining 3,625 samples were tested in private labs.

Samples tested per million population ratio rose further to 1,70,725.

The daily testing target for the state is 5,600 per day as per the World Health Organisation (WHO) benchmark of 140 per million per day, officials said

Eighteen government-run laboratories, 56 private laboratories and 1,076 Rapid Antigen test centres are conducting the tests in the state.

Out of total 2,80,195 positive cases so far, 70 per cent (1,96,136) were asymptomatic while the remaining 30 per cent (84,059) were symptomatic.

The data shows that 63.9 per cent of those tested positive so far were aged between 21-50 years. As many as 22.91 per cent were aged above 51 years. The positive cases include 13.18 per cent who were below 20 years.

Of the total cases, 60.44 per cent were male and 39.37 per cent female.