Hyderabad, In view of the rising number of Covid-19 cases and the Centre sounding an alert, the Telangana health authorities have ramped up testing across the state.

The authorities are now conducting 40,000 tests per day after 50 per cent drop since the roll out of the Covid vaccination drive on January 16.

The drop in the number of tests had come under flak from experts, who had cautioned against lowering the guard.

With the Union Health Ministry advising all the states to be on alert in the wake of the spike in coronavirus infections in some states over the last few days, the Telangana health department has restored the number of tests to the pre-vaccination level.

During the last 24 hours ending 8 p.m. Saturday, 40,985 tests were conducted in the state. Of this 35,906 samples were tested in government laboratories.

According to the Director of Public Health and Family Welfare, cumulative number of tests have crossed the 87 lakh-mark.

Samples tested per million population climbed to 2,33,762. The daily testing target for the state is 5,600 as per the WHO benchmark of 140 tests per million per day.

Meanwhile, Telangana reported 176 new Covid cases, pushing the tally to 2,98,807.

Greater Hyderabad saw maximum of 27 cases followed by Rangareddy and Medchal Malkajgiri at 14 each. Sangareddy saw 11 new cases(12). Five districts reported no cases while in the remaining 24 districts the count was in single digit.

One more person succumbed to the virus during the last 24 hours, taking the toll to 1,634.

The fatality rate remained 0.54 per cent against the national average of 1.4 per cent. While 44.96 per cent of the deaths occurred due to Covid, 55.04 per cent had comorbidities.

A total of 163 people recovered during the period, taking the cumulative recoveries to 2,95,222. The recovery rate stands at 98.80 per cent against the national average of 97.1 per cent.

Over 92 per cent of the beds in hospitals treating Covid cases remained vacant. As many as 8,219 beds out of 8,577 beds in 62 government hospitals were vacant. Similarly, in 216 private hospitals 6,899 out of 7,633 beds were vacant.