Hyderabad, Dec 16 : The Covid-19 death toll in Telangana crossed the 1,500 mark on Wednesday with three more fatalities being reported during the last 24 hours. The fresh deaths pushed the toll to 1,502, health officials said. The state's Covid fatality rate remains at 0.53 per cent against the national average of 1.5 per cent. According to the Director of Public Health and Family Welfare, 44.96 per cent of the deaths were due to Covid while the remaining 55.04 per cent were on account of comorbidities. The number of people recovered from Covid-19 also crossed 2.70 lakh mark on Wednesday. During the last 24 hours, 536 people have recovered from the virus, taking the cumulative numbers to 2,70,450. The recovery rate improved to 96.88 per cent against the national average of 95.2 per cent. The state now has 7,183 active cases and of them 5,041 are in home or institutional isolation. Health officials said 536 people tested positive during the last 24 hours, pushing the cumulative number of positive cases to 2,79,135. Of the new cases reported, Greater Hyderabad accounted for 107. Medchal Malakjgiri district saw the second highest number of new cases at 43 followed by Rangareddy (41), Warangal Urban (27), Khammam (26) and Bhadradri Kothagudem (26). Of the 52,057 tests conducted during the last 24 hours, government-run laboratories accounted for 48,626 while remaining 3,431 samples were tested in private labs. Samples tested per million population ratio rose further to 1,68,128. The daily testing target for the state is 5,600 per day as per the World Health Organisation (WHO) benchmark of 140 per million per day, officials said. As many as 18 government-run laboratories, 56 private laboratories and 1076 Rapid Antigen test centres are conducting the tests in the state. Out of total positive cases so far, 70 per cent (1,95,394) were asymptomatic while the remaining 30 per cent (83,741) were symptomatic. Over 90 per cent of beds in government-run and private hospitals treating Covid-19 in the state remained vacant. Out of 8,561 beds available in 61 government hospitals treating Covid, 7,779 beds were vacant. A total of 782 people were undergoing treatment in these hospitals. Similarly, in 220 private hospitals treating Covid, only 1,360 beds were occupied. Out of 7,935 beds, 6,575 were vacant. The data shows that 63.9 per cent of those tested positive so far were aged between 21-50 years. As many as 22.91 per cent were aged above 51 years. The positive cases include 13.18 per cent who were below 20 years. /IANS