The Telangana government on Friday said that a private laboratory has reported an extremely high positivity rate while testing samples of patients who were suspected to have contracted COVID-19.
The facility has reported 2,672 positive cases against 3,726 samples tested, the daily COVID-19 media bulletin by the state government said.
"The positivity rate is at 71.7%, which is a gross variation and discrepancy in the notified positivity rate of COVID-19 till date. The issue needs to be evaluated by an expert committee and, until then, the data of the said lab has been kept under abeyance," the bulletin added.
Official sources said the test results given by the said lab have not been included in Friday's report.
The state government had earlier asked some private labs to rectify shortcomings after inaccuracies were found in those facilities during inspections.
Meanwhile, with a record single-day spike in COVID-19 cases, Telangana on Friday crossed the 20,000 mark, overtaking both Rajasthan and West Bengal in terms of total number of infections so far.
A day after recording 1,213 cases, the state touched a new high of 1,892 positive cases, pushing its tally to 20,462. Telangana has now climbed to the sixth position in the list of states with most cases.
Out of this, officials have said that 10,195 people have recovered while a total of 9,984 people are undergoing treatment in hospitals or at home.
The state also reported eight deaths on Friday, taking the death toll to 283.
Out of the 1,892 fresh cases, 1,658 were reported from the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) area, the epicentre of the coronavirus spread in the state, followed by Ranga Reddy district, neighbouring Hyderabad, with 56 cases.
According to the Director of Public Health and Family Welfare, 5,965 samples were tested during the last 24 hours. This is the highest number of tests to be conducted in a single day. With this, the state has crossed the one lakh mark in the cumulative number of tests done.
With PTI and IANS inputs