Hyderabad, Feb 15 (PTI) After a gap of eight months, Telangana recorded less than 100 fresh COVID-19 cases while two deaths pushed the toll to 1,618, the state government said on Monday.

Only 99 new COVID-19 infections were detected out of the 15,766 samples tested in the state taking the tally of positive cases to 2,96,673 as of 8 pm on Saturday, a bulletin here said.

It was on June 2 last year that the state previously reported fresh cases below 100, adding 99 cases.

Twentyfour of the fresh cases were from the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) areas while Rangareddy district accounted for ten, it said.

Cumulative recoveries rose to 2,93,379 with the discharge of 169 more people from various hospitals as the number of active cases, recording a steady fall in the past several weeks, further declined to 1,676.

Cumulatively, more than 83.11 lakh samples have been tested. The samples tested per million population was over 2.23 lakh, the bulletin said.

The case fatality and recovery rates stood at 0.54 per cent and 98.88 per cent against the national average of 1.4 per cent and 97.3 per cent, it added.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)