PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Minister Taimur Salim Khan Jhagra has said that the province has recorded the highest recovery rate of patients infected with Covid-19 as compared to all the other provinces and Islamabad capital territory as 31 per cent infected people have healed, showing the success of hospitals.

Citing a report of National Emergency Centre Islamabad, he told a news conference on Wednesday that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was ahead in terms of cure rate of the Covid-19 patients than Punjab’s 30 per cent, Sindh’s 267 per cent, Balochistan’s 21 per cent and Islamabad’s 13 per cent. He said that it was testimony to their best healthcare system.

“Our healthcare providers need appreciation for their professionalism and hard work in these times. We are making all-out efforts to enable them to further improve cure rate,” said the minister.

He described the enforcement of lockdown a blessing as it allowed the government to scale up its preparedness level to combat the pandemic more effectively. “We have enhanced facilities for Covid-19 patients. Currently, the province has 200 isolation and 359 quarantine centres and 5,598 beds have been exclusively allocated for Covid-19 patients,” he added.

Mr Jhgra said that hospitals in the province had more than 550 ventilators to manage the critically-ill patients requiring mechanical breathing. “We have also supplied over 1.4 million masks to hospitals to ensure safety of our healthcare workers besides increasing our testing capacity for Covid-19 patients from only 40 per day on March to 2,160 per day on May 18,” he added.

Minister says it is testimony to best healthcare system

There are 11 laboratories including four private that are conducting the tests, with bulk of the diagnosis coming from the public sector labs. The province has also been ahead of other provinces as far as tests conducted in public laboratories are concerned.

The minister said that government was strengthening healthcare system by inducting healthcare providers under locum system. “We are in the process to scrutinise 19,000 applicants, who have expressed willingness to join the locum system, besides mobilising 1,700 workers to facilitate people at their doorsteps during the pandemic,” he said.

Mr Jhagra said that the lockdown measures enforced by the government paid off as on average, the province was reporting 160 to 200 new cases per day and the rate was steady during the last 10 days.

He claimed that deaths from the pandemic were increasing at 10 per cent a week, showing low virus transmission rate that could be attributed to success of the measure taken by the government.

The minister defended the government’s move of easing lockdown measures, saying most countries around the world were moving towards removing restrictions and returning to normal routine with precautionary measures because the economies had shrunk and people could afford further losses due to shutting down business and work.

He said that people should adhere to social distancing rules in strictest form and use masks, stay at home and avoid venturing out in public needlessly and focus on cleanliness and disinfecting surfaces of use of articles in which they came into contact to stem tide of the infection.

“Mandatory masks are an effective and inexpensive solution that reduces the risk of infection, while opening up social and economic activities,” said the minister. He appealed to people to adopt safety measures during Eid shopping.

Published in Dawn, May 21st, 2020