Zubair Qureshi
With four deaths and 98 new cases, Islamabad on Friday reported a relatively high number of Covid-19 cases and deaths during the last 24 hours prompting the authorities to review their strategy and conduct raids on shopping malls, markets and bus stops etc.
Against Thursday when the number of cases in twenty-four hours was 81 and deaths 142, Friday registered 98 cases and 146 deaths.
On the other hand the number of recoveries in the federal capital has also acceded 10,000—10,240 to be exact—and the total tally of cases stood at 13,829.
Meanwhile the authorities are pinning their hopes in the fact that the number of new patients have fallen drastically and in Rawalpindi and Islamabad more than 60% beds allocated for coronavirus patients are lying empty.
Joint Executive Director (JED) of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) Dr Minhajus Siraj told Pakistan Observer that the patient average has dropped to less than 100 to the PIMS as compared to June when we received 200-300 patients daily.
Presently, we have 51 patients admitted in our isolation wards/quarantine centres against a capacity 200. Not only patients’ arrival has declined, the number of health workers, doctors, nurses and paramedics infected with coronavirus has also gone down from 200 to 62, said Dr Minhaj.
In Rawalpindi too, most of the beds allocated for coronavirus patients in the Allied Hospitals of the garrison city—District Headquarters Hospital, Holy Family Hospital and Benazir Bhutto Hospital—are lying empty. According to an official of the district government, this improvement is because of the government’s ‘smart lockdown’ policy.
According to the District Health Officer, Dr Zaeem Zia, the strategy adopted by the Islamabad district administration and the health department had paid off giving promising results.
These measures are the fundamental guidelines on and include contact tracing, isolation and quarantine, symptomatic and asymptomatic states and interview of the contacts.
Of 100 tests presently, 5% are resulting in positive and of 2070 test run, only 98 were found infected. “The real challenge,” said Dr Zaeem “is to sustain this.”
Meanwhile, the district administration of Islamabad has issued the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for the cattle markets being set up ahead of Eid Al Azha in various parts of the city.
According to these SOPs no restaurant or tea stall would be allowed on the premises of the cattle markets. Children and senior citizens will not be allowed inside the premises of these markets. The cattle markets are also required to have well-ventilated management offices, medical and veterinary camps, spacious separate parking lots for customers and cattle transport vehicles.
Besides, separate entry and exit points for one-way controlled movement are required.
