For the past few days, Telangana has been reporting a gradual fall in the number of Corona cases in the state, while the number of cases has been going up alarmingly in Andhra Pradesh.
For example, on Monday, only two cases for Covid-19 were reported in Telangana, whereas 80 cases were registered in Andhra Pradesh. This was exactly in contrary to the initial days of lockdown when the cases were very few in AP, while Telangana was reporting 60 to 75 cases a day.
This huge difference is really surprising, especially since the Tablighi Jamaat returnees are in huge numbers in Telangana, rather than in Andhra.
The reason is very simple: Telangana has not been conducting many tests, whereas Andhra Pradesh has been claiming credit for conducting maximum number of tests per million population in the country.
According to reports, Telangana has been conducting only 300-400 tests per day, though it has nine designated testing labs in Hyderabad, including the high-profile Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology.
On Sunday, there were reports that only 175 tests were conducted in Telangana. Apparently, the government does not want to show high number of positive cases on the assumption that most of them would be asymptomatic and could recover on their own without getting admitted to hospitals.
On the other hand, Andhra Pradesh has stepped up the testing and has been conducting 5000-6000 tests every day; and it is resulting in huge number of positive cases surfacing in the state. On Tuesday, 82 positive cases have been recorded in the past 24 hours and a total of 80,334 tests have been conducted so far.
There is no point in avoiding tests and hide figures of positive cases only for the record sake, because there is every possibility that the asymptomatic cases can transmit the disease to old and sick, who are vulnerable to the disease.
That way, Andhra Pradesh is far ahead of Telangana in being alert to the reality.
