Hyderabad, Mar 12 (IANS): Telangana reported 181 new Covid-19 cases and one death during the last 24 hours, said health officials on Friday.

The state has been witnessing a steady rise in new infections. Despite fewer tests conducted on Thursday on account of Maha Shivratri, the state reported a higher number of cases.

Only 21,340 tests were conducted as compared to the daily average of 40,000. The authorities conducted fewer tests every weekend and on holidays.

Of this, 16,556 samples were tested in government laboratories and 4,784 in private facilities.

The fresh cases pushed the cumulative tally to 3,00,717 while the toll reached 1,650.

The fatality rate remained 0.54 per cent as compared to the national average of 1.4 per cent. While 44.96 per cent of the deaths occurred due to Covid-19, 55.04 per cent had comorbidities.

After several weeks, the daily Covid-19 count in Greater Hyderabad jumped to 44. Rangareddy reported the second highest number of cases at 19 followed by Medchal Malkajgiri at 15 and Nizamabad with 10. Eight districts reported no cases while in the remaining 21 districts, the daily count was in single digit.

The health authorities conducted 21,340 tests, taking the cumulative number to 91,14,985.

Telangana's figure for samples tested per million population now stands at 2,44,894. Officials say the daily testing target for the state is 5,600 as per the WHO benchmark of 140 tests per million per day.

A total of 163 people recovered during the last 24 hours, taking the cumulative recoveries to 2,97,195. The recovery rate dropped to 98.82 per cent but is still higher than the national average of 96.8 per cent.

The total number of active cases rose to 1,872, including 733 who were in home/institutional quarantine.

More than 90 per cent of the beds in hospitals treating Covid-19 cases remained vacant. As many as 8,090 beds out of 8,454 beds in 62 government hospitals were vacant. Similarly, in 215 private hospitals, 6,829 out of 7,605 beds were vacant.