The Telangana government has decided to completely lift the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown in the state. The state cabinet made the decision and announced it on Saturday, 19 June.
As per reports submitted by Health Department officials, the state government has claimed that COVID-19 cases and positivity rate in the state have reduced significantly, and that the COVID-19 situation in the state is now completely under control.
Therefore, it has been decided that the lockdown will be completely lifted, the Chief Minister’s Office said.
The Telangana cabinet has directed authorities of various departments to completely lift all restrictions imposed during the lockdown. This also means that the night curfew, which has been in place since 20 April, will be lifted.
The state cabinet had recently extended the lockdown by 10 days, from 10 June to 20 June. For this duration, the timings when movement of people was allowed was relaxed, from the existing 6 am to 1 pm, to end at 5 pm.
On 18 June, Telangana officially reported 1,417 new COVID-19 cases, pushing the total tally so far to 6.10 lakh, while the official death toll rose to 3,546 with 12 more fatalities.
The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) region accounted for the highest number of cases with 149, followed by Rangareddy (104) and Khammam (93) districts, the state government bulletin said, providing details as of 5:30 pm on 18 June.
The number of recoveries outnumbered fresh cases with 1,897 people recovering from the virus, taking the cumulative number to 5.88 lakh. The number of active cases was 19,029, the bulletin said.
It said 1.24 lakh samples were tested on 19 June, taking the total number of samples tested so far to 1.73 crore. The samples tested per million population was 4.65 lakh.
The case fatality rate in the state was 0.58 percent, according to the state government’s official records. The recovery rate in Telangana was 96.30 percent, the bulletin said.
(This article was first published in The News Minute and republished here with permission.)
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