For the first time since the outbreak of COVID-19, Telangana conducted over 10,000 tests in a single day, while the number of new cases showed a declining trend for a second consecutive day on Friday.

Authorities tested 10,354 samples and of them 1,278 tested positive. With this the state has doubled the number of daily tests.

It was immediately not clear if the authorities have started using Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) kits. The officials had already deployed RAT kits at 40 urban primary health care centres in parts of Greater Hyderabad and in neighbouring Rangareddy and Medchal districts.

The move came amid continuing criticism of the state government by the opposition parties and public health activists for not doing enough testing.

The number of daily positive cases, which were hovering around 1,900 for the last few days, slumped to 1,410 on Thursday with the number of tests conducted 5,954. With Friday’s tests, the state has so far conducted 1,51,109 tests.

With the 1,278 new cases on Friday, the state’s tally mounted to 32,224. Eight fresh deaths push the death toll to 339.

Hotspot Greater Hyderabad registered 762 cases while neighbouring districts Rangareddy and Medchal saw 171 and 85 new infections respectively. Another adjacent district Sangareddy recorded 36 cases.

Friday also saw recovery of 1,013 patients. With this the number of patients recovered moved up to 19,205. A total of 12,680 people are under treatment at hospitals or at home.

According to the media bulletin, only one per cent of the total positive cases have died of COVID. The percentage of recoveries stands at 60. As many as 83 per cent of the active cases are asymptomatic or with mild symptoms and 13 per cent have moderate symptoms. Only four per cent have severe symptoms.

It also said 90.5 per cent of 17,081 COVID beds in the government-run hospitals are vacant.