PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is likely to extend health emergency for another three months to be able to promptly procure personal protective equipment and medicines as Covid-19 cases continue to emerge in the province.

“The meeting of National Command and Operation Centre will take place today (Wednesday) through zoon where the health department will make presentation regarding coronavirus situation in the province,” officials in health department told Dawn.

They said that despite downtrend in Covid-19 cases, they would also recommend extension of health emergency to be able to cope with any outbreak in the province.

On Tuesday, the province recorded 20 more infections, making the tally of Covid-19 patients 219,818 since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020. Of the affected people, 213,356, patients including 10 recorded during the last 24 hours have recovered from the infectious ailment, according to a report of health department.

Officials say coronavirus cases continue to surface

No death has been recorded due to coronavirus since the first week of April this year. However, health officials said that diagnosis of new infections was a matter of concern as positivity in some cities of Sindh province had swelled to 10 per cent. So far, 6,324 persons have died due to Covid-19.

Officials said that cases continued to dip and emerge again in the province. “We have recorded zero cases during the past few days but it is not sufficient to decide that the pandemic is on decline as we need at least 20 days zero cases in a row,” they added.

They said that since June 1, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded only 135 cases that meant six infections per day but some districts including Peshawar, Mardan, Swat and Abbottabad continued to report infections. “It can snowball into major outbreak. Peshawar continues to record bulk of cases and fatalities, so is the case with Mardan, Swat and Abbottabad,” they added.

The officials said that they needed to extend health emergency for next three months. In April, the government extended the health emergency and its duration will end on June 30.

The health department had invoked Public Health (Surveillance and Response) Act, 2017 in February 2020 for the first time to pave way for speedy procurement of medical and surgical supplies to deal with the threat posed by the outbreak of Covid-19. It was extended from time to time to be able to cope with the situation.

Officials said that Covid-19 infections had come down drastically due to which they started procurement of personal protective equipment (PPEs), medicines and other items through normal procedures. “Now we have also sought advice from World Health Organisation and Centre for Disease Control, US, and they want us to extend the emergency as cases are being reported around the globe,” they added.

Through health emergency, the rules are relaxed so the department will be able to procure required items and take quick measures unlike normal procedure that takes longer to procure medicines, etc. “New variants of the virus are also being detected in many countries,” said officials.

They said that health department also wanted to speed up vaccination against Covid-19 as it was the only way to protect people. “We have administered first dose of vaccine to 18,115,499 people, second dose to 13,602,601 and booster to 1,064,722 people,” they said. The vaccination centres are fully operational but the people are not taking interest in immunisation because they think the pandemic is over.

“Vaccination would remain in progress as far as the cases are being reported. Similarly, we will increase testing of the close contacts of patients and at least 15 people in the neighbourhoods need to be screened,” they said.

Officials said that people should continue to adhere to preventive measures, especially social distancing and using face masks, to stay safe from the infectious ailment.

Published in Dawn, June 22nd, 2022