Charminar illuminated in tricolours on the occasion of Telangana State Formation Day, in Hyderabad.
Telangana cabinet on Saturday decided to lift coronavirus lockdown completely in the state. However, the state government has not fixed any date to lift the restrictions.
At its meeting, the state cabinet discussed the matter and decided on total removal of the lockdown which was imposed to control the spread of Covid in the state.
With the latest instalment of lockdown set to end on Saturday, the state cabinet had been convened for an emergency meeting to decide the future course of action. The cabinet discussed the report prepared by the health department, which noted that with corona cases and positivity rate declining significantly, the pandemic is in control in the state.
While the cabinet has instructed all departments to withdraw all the restrictions that have been imposed during the lockdown, there is no clarity yet on allowing inter-state bus services.
On Friday, Telangana reported 1,417 new COVID-19 cases, pushing the tally to 6,10,834, while the toll rose to 3,546 with 12 more fatalities.
The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) accounted for the most number of cases with 149, followed by Rangareddy (104) and Khammam (93) districts, a state government bulletin said, providing details as of 5.30 PM on Friday.
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The number of recoveries outnumbered fresh cases with 1,897 people recovering from the virus, taking the cumulative number to 5,88,259.
The number of active cases was 19,029, the bulletin said. It said 1,24,430 samples were tested on Friday, taking the total number of samples tested so far to 1,73,14,780.
The samples tested per million population was 4,65,200. The case fatality rate in the state was 0.58 per cent against 1.3 per cent at the national level.
Meanwhile, Covid-19 vaccination drive is at a brisk pace, Telangana has so far vaccinated over 68 lakh people, including nearly 17 lakh high-risk individuals. A total of 68,04,722 people in the state received the first dose till June 15, and 15,24,610 received both doses.
The health authorities continue to vaccinate more than 1.5 lakh people every day. Officials said 1,63,169 doses were administered on June 15. While 1,56,048 received the first dose, 7,121 received the second jab.
Though the vaccination drive in the state was affected by the shortage of doses last month, the programme gathered momentum since the last week of May as the authorities started focusing on high-risk individuals and opened vaccination for the 18-44 age group.
(With inputs from IANS)
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