PESHAWAR: No death was recorded due to Covid-19 on Wednesday in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for the first time since the onset of the pandemic.

The province used to record mortalities due to the virus almost on daily basis since it claimed the first life in Mardan in March last year. The death of a resident of Mardan was also the first fatality due to the pandemic in the country.

A report of health department said that the province reported 128 new cases of Covid-19 with no death during the last 24 hours. It said that the province’s tally of fatalities was 4,344 while overall incidence numbered 138,855.

Of the positive cases, 133,004 patients including 164 recorded during the last 24 hours have recovered from the infectious ailment whereas the province is currently home to 1,505 active coronavirus cases. A total of 10,011 people underwent Covid-19 testing in the province, said the report.

Peshawar, the populous district, continues to lead in new cases as 50 more patients were reported, making its total count of infections 50,663, the highest number reported by any district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Peshawar continues to register high number of cases

Peshawar has also 433 active cases while the death toll in the capital city is 2,116, about 50 per cent of the total persons passed away due to Covid-19 since its onset in the province.

Abbottabad reported 14 new patients while the number of cases from other districts was in single digit.

Authorities attribute the decline in number of patients and mortalities due to lockdown policy and vaccination. Despite more than 10,000 tests, number of less incidence shows that the pandemic is on decline but there should be no laxity as the fourth wave is feared to be extremely lethal.

“It also happened last year when people got relaxed and there was a huge influx of patients in June when hospitals were overburdened with patients. We had run out of beds due to which the patients were referred to private hospitals,” senior officials told this scribe.

They said that people were still not adhering to safety measures of social distancing rules and hand washing as they continued to mingle with crowds that could snowball the pandemic. They said that alhough the mortality rate declined but still they were detecting more cases, especially in Peshawar, which was not a good omen.

“Peshawar is the hardest-hit district and if we exclude it from the Covid-19 statistics, the situation is quite normal in the province. Level of positivity in Peshawar is still 7.5 per cent. In Nowshera infectivity rate is 4.2 per cent and other high-risk districts have less than 1 per cent positivity,” said officials.

They said that more attention was paid to Peshawar, the epicentre of the infection, to prevent the situation from becoming worse again.

Officials said that health department banked on the district administration for prevention of the virus. They added that they were taking care of patients at the hospitals and the administration was required to ensure that the people adhered to Covid-19 precautions to be able to do away with virus in Peshawar.

“We have been repeatedly requesting the administration to take steps to enhance vaccination. Several requests have also been sent to government departments to issue instructions to their respective staffers to get vaccinated but all the requests have not been responded positively,” they said.

Officials said that case fatality rate was also above 2 per cent, which was not dangerous but vaccination and SOPs should be at the centre stage of their approach towards tackling the pandemic.

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2021