Hyderabad, Jul 30 (IANS): The number of Covid-19 deaths in Telangana crossed 500 with 13 more people succumbing to the virus, health officials said on Thursday. The latest fatalities pushed the death toll to 505 while with 1,811 new cases the state's tally climbed to 60,717.

According to the director of public health, the case fatality rate in the state remained low at 0.83 per cent against the national average of 2.26 per cent. A 53.87 per cent of the deaths occurred due to comorbidities.

The surge in new cases continued with 1,811 infections reported during the last 24 hours, ending 8 p.m. on Wednesday.

While Greater Hyderabad remained the hotspot with 521, the figures show that spike continued in the cases in districts. There was a big surge in Rangareddy district with 289 new cases while Medchal Malkajgiri reported 151 cases.

Warangal Urban (102), Karimnagar (97), Nalgonda (61), Nizamabad (44), Mahaboobnagar (41), Mahabubabad (39) are among the districts where the surge in new cases continued. All 33 districts reported new infections.

The officials attributed this to the increase in the number of daily tests.

The state conducted 18,263 tests, taking the cumulative number of tests to 4,16,202. The health department continues to maintain that its number of daily tests is well above the target of 5,600 tests as per the World Health Organisation (WHO) benchmark of 140 tests per million per day.

The state also witnessed recovery of 821 more people, taking the total number of recoveries to 44,572. The officials claim that with a 73.4 per cent recovery rate, the state is doing much better than the national average of 64 per cent.

The state has 15,640 active cases, including 10,155 individuals in home/institutional isolation. More than 84 per cent of those under home isolation are asymptomatic.