TS Extends Lockdown Till April 30

In a move that was widely anticipated, the Telangana State Cabinet on Saturday decided to extend the lockdown till April 30 to check the spread of the deadly coronavirus.

Announcing this at a media conference after a four-and-half-hour Cabinet meeting at Pragathi Bhavan here, Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, issuing a stern warning that the extended lockdown will be implemented very strictly, however, held out a ray of hope for the people, stating that there was every possibility that Telangana would be largely free of the virus by April 24 given the present declining trend of positive cases. “This would also largely depend on not many new cases surfacing, particularly from the areas that have been declared containment zones,” he added.

Giving a detailed report on the status in the State, the Chief Minister said so far 14 deaths had been reported out of the total of 503 positive cases in the State so far. “While 96 persons, most of them foreign returnees and their primary contacts who tested positive in the first wave of the virus, have been discharged, the number of active cases in the State in various hospitals as on Saturday is 393. Thankfully, none of them are critical cases and do not even require to be put on ventillators,” Chandrashekhar Rao said, adding that only 1,654 persons with symptoms were under quarantine in various facilities across the State.