Hyderabad, Sep 17 : The number of deaths due to Covid-19 in Telangana crossed the 1,000-mark on Thursday with nine more deaths while 2,159 new cases pushed the state's tally to over 1.65 lakh. Telangana is 13th state in the country to see over 1,000 Covid deaths. Five of these states have fewer cases than Telangana. Telangana health officials say the case fatality rate in the state is low at 0.60 per cent compared to many states. The national average is 1.62 per cent. According to the director of public health, 53.87 per cent of the deceased in Telangana had comorbidities. Seventy per cent of 1,65,003 cases reported so far in the state were asymptomatic. As many as 65.23 per cent of those tested positive were in the age group of 21-50 years. Officials said that the ratio of those above 51 years dropped to 21.82 against 24.71 per cent earlier. Those below 20 years are now 12.95 per cent against 10 per cent earlier. Officials said 64.83 per cent of those tested positive were male while the remaining 38.17 per cent were female. During the last 24 hours ending Wednesday 8 p.m., Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) reported 318, a slight drop from 325 reported the previous day. Its neighbouring districts Rangareddy and Medchal Malkajgiri reported a daily jump of 176 and 121 cases respectively. Sangareddy, another district bordering the state capital, recorded 64 cases. Outside Hyderabad and surrounding districts, Nalgonda topped the list with 141 cases followed by Siddipet (132), Karimnagar (127), Warangal Urban (98), Nizamabad (84) and Khammam (77). The state also saw 2,108 people recovering from the virus during the same period. With this the total number of recoveries have gone up to 1,33,555 The state's recovery rate has further improved to 80.94 per cent against the national average of 78.59 per cent. The number of active cases in the state stands at 30,443 including 23,674 in home/institutional isolation. The authorities conducted 53,094 tests during the last 24 hours. With this the number of samples tested so far mounted to 23,29,316. The authorities permitted five more private laboratories to conduct the tests, taking the total number of laboratories to 60 including 17 government-run laboratories. There are also 1076 rapid antigen tests in the state. They tested 53,094 samples including 23,361 primary and 6,371 secondary contacts. However, no break-up of RT PCR and rapid antigen tests was available. The state health authorities said samples tested per million population improved further to 62,740. This is much higher than the daily testing target of 5,600 per day as per the World Health Organisation (WHO) benchmark of 140 per million per day. Out of 20,396 beds under government, 17,823 beds are vacant including 1,505 ICU beds. The number of private hospitals treating Covid patients increased to 225 with the government adding one more hospital to the list. They have a total of 11,340 beds, out of which 7,125 are vacant. /IANS