Telangana and Andhra Prades – the two Telugu states – continued to record huge number of Covid-19 positive cases. On Wednesday, Telangana reported 49 new cases, while 34 surfaced in Andhra Pradesh.

With these new cases, the overall number of cases rose to 453 in Telangana and 361 in Andhra. There were no new deaths reported in either state.

Most of the positive cases in Telangana were from Hyderabad which reported as many as 175, followed by 36 in Nizamabad, 34 in Ranga Reddy, 25 in Warangal (Urban), 22 in Jogulamba Gadwal, 18 each in Medchal and Karimnagar and 14 in Nalgonda districts.

In Andhra Pradesh, majority of the cases were reported from Kurnool (75), followed by Guntur (49), Nellore (49), Krishna (37), Kadapa (28), Prakasam (28), West Godavari (22), Visakhapatnam (24) and Chittoor (20) districts.

Telangana health minister Eatala Rajender, however, claimed that the state had overcome the Covid-19 crisis to the extent of 95 per cent and hoped that there might not be admission of new patients in big numbers.

“We conducted tests for around 1100 persons who had returned from the Markaz at Nizamuddin in New Delhi and another 3,158 people who had come in contact with the Delhi returnees. They have all been shifted to as many as 167 quarantine centres. The test reports of another 535 samples are awaited,” the minister said.

He said the number of discharged positive cases was slowly increasing and till now, 45 patients had been discharged and the remaining 397 patients who were still undergoing treatment were also healthy.

Rajender said there was no scarcity of protective equipment for doctors and paramedical staff. “We have 80,000 personal protection equipment at present and we placed orders for another five lakh PPEs. Similarly, we have over one lakh N-95 masks and another five lakh masks are being procured. Orders have also been placed for two crore masks and five lakh goggles used by doctors and 3.5 lakh Covid-19 test kits,” he said.

The Telangana government has readied a 1500-bed hospital at Gachibowli sports complex and it would also make use of the services of 22 private medical college hospitals, the minister added.

Meanwhile, Andhra Pradesh chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy ordered taking over of as many as 58 private hospitals across 13 districts in the state to cope with the eventuality of a further spread of Covid-19 in the state.

A total of 19,114 beds are available in these private hospitals. Of them, 17,111 are non-ICU beds, 1,286 are ICU beds and 717 are isolation beds. Additionally, alternative facilities with a capacity of 530 have also been set up, an official release from the chief minister’s office said.