14 Orange zone districts set to turn Green zone in Telangana

Hyderabad: The number of green zone districts that are at nine present is set to increase to 23 in next few days. The Telangana government has requested the Centre to include 14 more districts that are in Orange zone at present in the Green zone list as no fresh cases have been reported in these districts. Also, the state government made one more request to include three districts that are in Red zone at present (Suryapet, Warangal-Urban and Nizamabad) in the revised Orange zone.

Elaborating on the details here on Friday, Health Minister Eatala Rajender said that they were expecting a decision on this on Monday. He said that 80 per cent of Telangana can be classified as Corona-free once Centre announces fresh list. He said that after all these modifications, only three districts-Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy and Medchal-Malkajgiri would be under Red zone list. The positive thing is that there are not many cases in rural parts in these districts that are not in GHMC limits, the minister said, adding that even in GHMC limits cases are only seen in seven or eight circles of the total 30 circles. The health minister further said that they explained to the Centre in a video conference on Friday on criticism about less number of cases being tested in the State.

"We told (Centre) that the state is following ICMR guidelines and conducting tests for those having symptoms. All contacts of positive cases having symptoms are made to undergo sample testing while those not having symptoms are put under home quarantine. As a precautionary measure, sample testing is being done on dialysis patients, and people having chronic health issues and also pregnant women in families of positive tested people even if they don't have symptoms," Eatala said.

Earlier, the state registered a big number of cases and hence it led to more number of tests per days as their contacts number was huge. "But of late we are getting less number of positive cases and against this backdrop the daily tests are also less as their contacts count is also less," he added.