Hyderabad, Dec 17 : A total of 509 new positive cases were detected and three persons died of Covid-19 and comorbidities in Telangana during the last 24 hours. The recovery rate improved to 96.89 per cent against the national average of 95.3 per cent. health officials said on Thursday. With the fresh fatalities, the death toll mounted to 1,505 while new cases took the state's tally to 2,79,644. 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 were on account of comorbidities. The state continues to record more number of recoveries than new cases. A total of 517 people recovered from the virus, taking the cumulative numbers to 2,70,967. The state now has 7,172 active cases and of them 5,063 are in home or institutional isolation. Over 90 per cent of beds in the 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, 7,797 beds were vacant. A total of 764 people were undergoing treatment in these hospitals. Similarly, in 220 private hospitals treating Covid, only 1,345 beds were occupied. Out of 7,935 beds, 6,590 were vacant. Of the new cases reported during the last 24 hours, Greater Hyderabad accounted for 104. The daily count in districts remained in single or double digits. Medchal Malkajgiri district saw the second highest number of new cases at 45 followed by Rangareddy (42), Warangal Urban (27), Khammam (25) and Siddipet (19). Of the 48,651 tests conducted during the last 24 hours, the government-run laboratories accounted for 45,025 while the remaining 3,627 samples were tested in private labs. Samples tested per million population ratio rose further to 1,69,435. 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 Eighteen government-run laboratories, 56 private laboratories and 1,076 Rapid Antigen test centres are conducting the tests in the state. Out of the total positive cases so far, 70 per cent (1,95,751) were asymptomatic while the remaining 30 per cent (83,893) were symptomatic. 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. Of the total cases, 60.44 per cent were male and 39.37 per cent female. /IANS