The total number of Covid-19 cases in Telangana breached the 10,000 mark (10,444) on Wednesday as the State reported 891 new positive cases on the day.

The Hyderabad region continues to report a large number of cases with 719 out of Wednesday’s cases being reported from there. Five persons succumbed to the disease on Wednesday, taking the total number of Covid-19 deaths in the State to 225. After discharges of 4,361 patients, the State has 5,858 active cases.

The State, which has increased the number of tests from 300-500 a day to about 3,000 in the last few days, tested 4,069 samples on Wednesday.

State Health Minister Eatala Rajender has said that Telangana Institute of Medical Sciences (TIMS), a dedicated medical facility for Covid-19 patients, will be inaugurated in the next few days.

The 1,500-bed facility, set up at Gachibowli, converting a vacant building near the stadium, will be later converted into a full-fledged super-speciality college-hospital on the lines of the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIMS).

Rajender visited the hospital to inspect the facility.

The State government has attracted sharp criticism from the Opposition for not opening the facility despite a sharp rise in the number of cases in the city.

The biggest bottleneck seems to be human resources. The State is finding it difficult to fill up vacancies to man the facility.

“It (the hospital) is already offering services for outpatients. It will start accepting in-patients in the next few days,” the Minister said.

Meanwhile, the State has tweaked the definition of ‘containment’ by limiting the containment zone to the particular home (as against the whole apartment complex or locality). “This will help avoid unnecessary barricading and help shift the critical patients to hospitals quickly,” said an official of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) said.