PESHAWAR: Thirty-three more people, including a doctor, died of Covid-19 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Tuesday as the positivity level in Mardan came down but went up slightly in Peshawar and Abbottabad.

With fresh mortalities, the count of people passing away from Covid-19 reached 2,953 in the province, a report by health department said.

According to it, the province detected 1,153 more cases of coronavirus during the last 24 hours, making total number of the province-wide patients 108,462. Of the total infected persons, 91,840 have recovered so far as 1,042 more recovered during the last 24 hours.

There are total of 13,669 active patients of coronavirus in the province now.

33 more people including a doctor die of virus in KP

Sixteen of the total fatalities occurred in Peshawar, which has been a hub of the virus since its advent in February last year. The provincial capital has so far reported 1,549 deaths due to the pandemic that are more 50 per cent of the overall deaths in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Peshawar also recorded 368 new cases, which took its total number of patients to 43,230.

Seven persons died in Mardan where the positivity level dropped to 32.6 per cent on Wednesday compared to 36.6 per cent recorded a day earlier. So far, 227 people have fallen prey to the virus in Mardan, the second populous city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after Peshawar.

The report said that positivity rate in Peshawar was recorded 25.8 per cent up from 25.6 per cent a day before.

Mardan also detected 110 new cases, which made its total tally of infected persons 5,439. Swat another, high-risk district, confirmed death of four persons from Covid-19, taking its total number of deceased to 209 whereas the number of newly-tested patients was 71. It has so far recorded 6,562 cases. The positivity level came down to 16.1 per cent from 17 per cent in the district.

Nowshera district, where positivity level rose to 21.9 per cent from 15.8 per cent, reported 47 new cases while Abbottabad recorded three new deaths due to which its total number of fatalities went up to 183. Two coronavirus patients died in Swabi and one in Mansehra.

A senior doctor and former district health officer of Tank, Dr Khair Mohammad Barki, died of Covid-19 at Hayatabad Medical Complex where he was on ventilator. So far, 61 doctors have died of coronavirus in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Senior physicians fear that number of patients will continue to surge as the people are in the habit of seeking treatment at the last stage of the ailment. “We appeal to people to contact doctors in case they develop minor symptoms of the diseases to undergo investigations and stay safe from the complications,” they said.

A senior physician told this scribe that they needed to brush aside the misconceptions from the minds of people about Covid-19 treatment. He said that some people thought that Covid-19 was not a disease. They thought that doctors killed people by giving them poisonous injections, he added.

“So far, about 100 health workers have died of Covid-19. It means that it is a genuine medical problem, which needs to be addressed scientifically,” said the physician. He said that government should start a programme to scale up level of public awareness regarding Covid-19 and safeguard them from the infectious ailment.

Health officials said that they enhanced the number of daily Covid-19 tests up to 8,000 per day to diagnose all suspected patients and trace their contacts. They said that the infection was preventable by following standard operating procedure. They said that lack of following precautionary measures was making the situation worse.

Published in Dawn, April 21st, 2021