Pandemic claims 20 more lives in KP

PESHAWAR: The district administration intensified crackdown on violators of the Covid-19 precautions as 20 more died of the virus on Thursday in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa including 11 in Peshawar.

Last time, the same number of deaths due to coronavirus was recorded in a single day on May 25 in the province. The province also recorded 682 new cases of the virus, also the highest number of infections during the last two months, with 246 from the capital city.

The province continues to detect foreign variants of the virus like Alpha, Beta and Delta. The foreign variants have been found in the samples of two patients out of 28 samples sent for genome sequencing from Swat. Previously, at least 36 patients tested positive for these variants in Peshawar and Swabi.

Health officials attribute spike in mortalities and incidence to non-compliance with Standard Operating Procedure, especially in the populous city of Peshawar, which has so far recorded 55,529 cases of the total 150,708 in the province. Also, it has recorded 2,235 fatalities of the total 4,624 dying due to the pandemic since its onset in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The district administration in a press release said that it imposed penalties and arrested managers of business outlets and took into custody 22 shopkeepers after sealing their shops for non-compliance with the Covid-19 SOPs in different areas of the provincial capital.

Peshawar admin intensifies action against violators of Covid SOPs

The administration also arrested 49 commuters for violating SOPs in public transport and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT). It said that action would continue against those people, who were not wearing mask.

BRT spokesman Umair Khan said that strict rules were chalked out for all the travellers to wear face masks. He said that there was no entry for the unmasked people. “We want to safeguard people from the pandemic and the people are cooperating,” he added.

The press release said that 18 restaurants and fast food outlets besides three cinema halls were also sealed for not adhering to the precautionary measures announced by the government.

Additional Deputy Commissioner Gul Bano also held a meeting with the transporters and informed them about the threats posed by the fourth wave of the coronavirus. She said that carelessness on part of people could worsen the situation.

“The transporters should scale up public awareness about the situation to prevent them and others from being infected with the virus,” she said.

Hospitalisation of Covid-19 patients in the province due to the pandemic also kept rising. Currently 1,161 patients are admitted to hospitals and 49 of them are on ventilators. The province has still 350 ventilators available for the Covid-19 patients.

The overall positivity for the infection is six per cent in the province while Peshawar has 14.4 per cent positivity rate, Nowshera 10.2 per cent, Mardan 8.7 per cent, Abbottabad 7.9 per cent and Swabi 6.3 per cent.

The bed occupancy in Peshawar is 51 per cent, in Abbottabad 71 per cent, in Swat 44 per cent, in Swabi 29 per cent, in Mardan 18 per cent and in Nowshera 24 per cent.

A health department report said that 11 deaths occurred due to coronavirus in Peshawar, two each in Mardan, Abbottabad, Kohat and Dera Ismail Khan and one in Nowshera.

Of the overall patients, 140,000 including 687 recorded during the last 24 hours have recovered from the infection. A total 10,013 tests were conducted in the province. The number of active cases is 6,084.

Swabi recorded 52 new recovered patients, Lower Chitral 45, Mansehra 42, Mardan 39, Abbottabad 37, Kohat 33, Upper Chitral 27, Malakand 24, Dir Lower and Dera Ismail Khan 21 each, Swat 19, Bannu 15 and Nowshera 13.