Health dept. to issue weekly COVID bulletins henceforth

Staff in charge of generating daily data to be diverted to vaccination drive

Telangana Health department has stopped issuing daily media bulletins on COVID-19 cases starting from Tuesday and will instead issue it once a week.

Apart from daily cases, the bulletins carry information on number of people who died of COVID-19, tests conducted in a day, admissions in government and private hospitals, cases according to each district, and other details. This helped people understand the prevalence of the novel coronavirus.

Citing the need for human resources which are dedicated for generating data daily, Director of Public Health G. Srinivasa Rao said it might be a good idea to involve them in COVID-19 vaccination drive instead.

From March 2020, when COVID-19 cases started to be detected in the State, number of cases and deaths were communicated to the public through daily media bulletins.

Dr Srinivasa Rao said they have noticed no major spikes in COVID-19 cases in Telangana but in case of any significant development, the media will be informed.

From single digit cases in a day in March 2020, as many as 2,000-2,900 cases a day were reported in August and September. Then the incidence started to decrease over the months. Currently, in February, 100-190 people are detected with coronavirus on a daily average.

With decrease in caseload, officials in the Health department have started to breathe easy. However, the surge in cases in Yavatmal district of Maharashtra, which borders Adilabad, made them take precautionary steps, again, to avoid a similar spike in cases.

Orders were issued to isolate everyone coming from the neighbouring State for seven days and conduct tests on them.