PESHAWAR: Coronavirus claimed 27 more lives including an employee of Lady Reading Hospital and infected 642 others in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Sunday as Peshawar, Mardan and Swat continued to record more deaths and new cases.

A report of health department said that 10 more people fell prey to the virus in Peshawar, five in Swat, four in Mardan and two each in Charsadda and Dir Upper while Chitral Lower, Kurram, Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan each lost one resident to the pandemic.

The provincial death toll due to virus has reached 3,615 since its onset. The number of province-wide cases of the infectious ailment is 124,484 while 111,142 patients (89 per cent) have recovered so far.

The report said that 963 more coronavirus patients recovered during the last 24 hours. There are total 9,727 active cases in the province now. Peshawar continued to record more cases as it diagnosed 113 people with the virus, it said.

Mardan has reported 64 new cases, Haripur 57, Malakand 56, Charsadda 52, Karak 37, Abbottabad 30, Battagram 25, Swabi 24, Dera Ismail Khan 22 and Swat has recorded 20 more patients of the infectious ailment.

27 people including hospital employee die of virus

A total 1,385 confirmed cases are currently admitted to various hospitals in high-risk districts of the province. Of them, 512 patients are on low flow oxygen, 798 are on high flow and 75 patients are on ventilators and are critical.

The report said that more than 85 per cent of the mortality occurred among elderly patients and people with underlying health conditions. A total of 8,180 tests were conducted throughout the province.

The province’s overall positivity rate for Covid-19 swabs is 7.4 per cent but the ratio is higher in the endemic areas, according to a health department’s report. It said that Mardan had 18,5 per cent positivity rate for Covid-19 swabs, Peshawar 16.3, Nowshera 14.3, Swat 10.1, Abbottabad 8.9 and Swabi had 5.1 per cent positivity rate.

Overall case fatality rate (CFR) is 2.8 per cent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa but it is higher in the infected districts. CFR is 4.6 in Mardan, 4.2 in Abbottabad, 3.8 each in Peshawar and Swabi, 3.6 in Swat and 2.1 in Charsadda.

Peshawar, Mardan, Malakand and Hazara divisions have reported bulk of deaths and Covid-19 patients.

Meanwhile, Covid-19 continues to kill the healthcare workers in the hospitals of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The latest victim of the virus is Wahidullah Khan, a Class-IV employee of Lady Reading Hospital. He succumbed to the infection on Sunday. So far, the pandemic has killed 14 Class-IV workers in the hospitals of the province.

Provincial Doctors Association said that so far 65 doctors died of the virus. They got infected in different hospitals while coming into contact with the patients.

The association has demanded financial compensation to the families of the fallen healthcare providers. The package approved in April 2020 was yet to be awarded to the heirs of the slain workers, it said.

Countrywide, 155 healthcare providers have died due to Covid-19, according to a report of World Health Organisation. It has infected 16,124 health workers nationwide while 15,425 have recovered from coronavirus so far while the remaining are in hospitals and quarantined in homes.

So far, 10,660 health workers have been vaccinated against Covid-19 in 482 centres in the province. On Sunday, a total of 25,604 people received vaccine, said a health department report.

So far, 38,325 health workers have been fully immunised against the virus while 235,137 people have been administered the first dose of the vaccine.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2021