Success against Covid-19 attributed to public sense of
responsibility, however threat is not yet over
Zubair Qureshi
The residents of Islamabad heaved a sigh of relief on Saturday as the National Command & Operation Centre (NCOC) described significant improvement in the coronavirus situation in the city and reported 58 new cases in the last twenty-four hours, the lowest number in last three months.
According to the NCOC, after 1,461 tests conducted in Islamabad’s urban as well as rural areas, 58 were found infected with Covid-19 showing a positivity rate of 3.9 per cent which places Islamabad in ‘safe zone’ against Covid-19
Three persons however, reportedly died during the period but they were already on the ventilators and their condition was stated to be critical.
With these new single-day deaths and cases of Covid-19, Islamabad’s total number of cases climbed to 79,027 and death toll reached 727, the NCOC data further reveals.
This is partially due to accelerated pace of vaccination drive in the city and partially due to strict enforcement of lockdown during the Eid holiday from May 8 to May 16, said Director General Health Dr Muhammad Safdar while talking to Pakistan Observer. However, he cautioned that the threat was not yet over and the people needed to continue to follow all the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) like before.
After the situation improved in the last one week, the inter-city and intra-city public transport is also allowed to come to the roads from Sunday (today) while the shops as well as businesses are allowed to remain open until 8 p.m from Monday (tomorrow).
This is something we were waiting for since the beginning of lockdown in the federal capital, said Aslam, a local assistant in a shop in Karachi Company, G-9 Markaz. Closure of businesses, markets and shops has adversely affected thousands of persons like Aslam who were dependent on daily wages and had found it almost impossible to make both ends meet during the lockdown.
Schools and colleges however, will resume from May 23 as per the previous announcement by the NCOC which would meet again on May 19 to review the situation before giving a final go-ahead.
District Health Officer of Islamabad, Dr Zaeem Zia while talking to Pakistan Observer also lauded the cooperation of the public.
He paid rich tributes to the health teams for working with great motivation during the lockdown and Ramazan ul Mubarak administering vaccines to the faithful.
Our health teams and volunteers are our real heroes. About vaccination, he said around 250,000 persons are likely to be vaccinated by the end of the week and he urged the public, those eligible (above 40) for vaccination to visit their nearest centres to get the jabs.
Unless we get completely vaccinated, we cannot say for sure the exact situation of coronavirus, he said.
He also requested the public to display the same sense of responsibility while following the Covid-19 SOPs.
