Zubair Qureshi
The federal capital’s markets, schools, parks, offices, the bus and the railway stations have turned into coronavirus hotspots as the city witnessed another day of spike in coronavirus cases in a period of 24 hours. According to the District Health Officer (DHO) Dr Zaeem Zia, 392 positive cases of Covid-19 were reported against 7,098 tests in the federal capital with the positivity of 5.5 %.
This is something very concerning and the people are cautioned against violation of Coronavirus SOPs, he said.
What is more alarming, however, is the number of deaths (8) during this same period. This is the first time since last month, even before that, that the city has reported 8 as daily death count due to coronavirus.
A day earlier, on Saturday, it was reported that Islamabad’s vent as well as bed capacity has reached the maximum limit in the hospitals to cope with the new patients of Covid-19. This is an alarming situation and the government needs to take drastic measures, said the health authorities.
On Saturday, 362 beds, excluding ventilators, were reserved for patients in 12 hospitals. On Saturday, there were 240 patients admitted to these hospitals with the bed utilization rate of 66.2pc. Punjab has 10.1pc utilisation rate as out of the 8,624 beds reserved in 242 hospitals for the infected people, 877 were occupied.
Azad Kashmir has the third highest utilisation rate (8.4pc) with 78 of the 918 beds in 17 hospitals occupied. Meanwhile, talking to Pakistan Observer about Islamabad’s high number of coronavirus cases being reported Dr Zaeem Zia said our teams reach out to everyone daily, please cooperate with and help them contain the virus by following SoPs.
Meanwhile, Deputy Commissioner of Islamabad, Hamza Shafqat in a statement said the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) administration has sealed as many as 125 educational institutions across the federal capital during last two months after 388 people among the students and staff tested positive for coronavirus. He said that the ICT staff along with health teams was ensuring the implementation of anti-coronavirus standard operating procedures (SOPs) at schools, colleges and universities to keep the virus at bay.
Hamza Shafqat said the ICT administration is vigilant to protect our children and people cooperation was crucial to battle the second wave of coronavirus.
“We must fight back the second wave of Covid-19,” he urged the masses to strictly adhere to anti-cornavirus guidelines. While talking to media persons at a media interaction, the DC Islamabad said the cases in the federal capital skyrocketed and some 100-150 cases were being reported on a daily basis.
As per current figures, over 4000 active COVID-19 cases in the federal capital and over 270 have died so far while more than 30 patients were on ventilator, he added.
“We are back to July and sectors including I-8, G-6, G-9 and G-10 are the COVID-19 hotspots,” he remarked.
