PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Tuesday recorded 10 more deaths due to Covid-19, taking the total count of province-wide fatalities from the virus to 114.

The health department has asked the government to declare Peshawar the most sensitive district and enforce strict lockdown to save lives of the people.

In view of rising deaths and cases, the health department has sent a request to the government, asking it to enforce lockdown in strictest form to stem tide of the pandemic.

According to a daily situation report released by health department on Tuesday, 176 new confirmed cases were diagnosed positive for coronavirus during the last 24 hours, making overall number of patients afflicted with Covid-19 to 2,160 in the province so far.

Health dept asks govt to declare Peshawar the most sensitive district

Case Fatality Rate (CFR) in the province soared to 5.3 per cent up from 5.2 per cent while it went down to 8.6 per cent from 8.9 per cent registered in Peshawar on Monday. The provincial CFR is still the highest in Pakistan. The nationwide case fatality rate is 2.13 per cent.

Peshawar continues to lead the death toll with 63 as seven more people passed away of the ailment so far. The CFR in Peshawar is 55 pc of the province-wide deaths.

Of the fresh fatalities, two occurred in Mardan, the second largest district of the province making the total tally to eight there. One person died of coronavirus in Abbottabad, taking number of fatalities due to the epidemic in the district to four.

Peshawar has recorded 734 active cases with the addition of 107 new patients during the last 24 hours, according to the daily situation report.

The province so far provided treatment to 495 patients, who were sent home after recovery as 44 more were discharged from hospitals when they were declared healthy.

Kohistan Lower and Kolai Palas districts are yet to report any case of Covid-19. Each of Mohmand, Chitral Upper, Torghar, Kohistan Upper, Orakzai, North Waziristan, Tank and South Waziristan districts have less than 10 cases while Peshawar has 734 cases, Mardan has 136, Swat has163 and Buner has102 cases. All the seven divisions remained endemic with the virus.

As far case prevailed, Peshawar with six per cent and Swat with three per cent are among the 10 high Covid-19 burdened districts in the country, according to a report of World Health Organisation.

According to it, 15,737 suspected people have been tested so far and 500 patients have been admitted to hospitals and 12 of them are on ventilator.

Reports also showed that more than 600 cases were recorded each day after April 22, showing rise in case detection throughout the country. The government is also taking measures to scale up public awareness regarding prevention of the infection and has notified a three-member team of public health experts to interact with media regarding the Covid-19 situation in the province.

A notification issued from health secretariat on Tuesday said that in view of the ongoing pandemic, Prof Ziaul Haq, the pro vice-chancellor of Khyber Medical University, Dr Iftikharuddin, assistant professor at Bacha Khan Medical College Mardan, and Dr Khalid Rehman, assistant professor at Khyber Medical University, were nominated as official spokespersons of the government to talk to media regarding Covid-19.

The doctors, who specialise in infectious diseases, have also been tasked to spread awareness about the Covid-19 pandemic among people and try to inform people about the significance of social distancing.

Our Correspondent from Haripur adds: A man, who died of Covid-19, was buried in a roadside village of union council Bareela in Khanpur tehsil.

According to Dr Sher Bahadur, head of rapid response team of health department, the deceased, a 65-year-old resident of Bandi Muneem village, was running a business in Karachi. He returned to his native village two weeks ago. Later, he was admitted to Benazir Shaheed Hospital Rawalpindi when he faced some respiratory complications.

His swab sample was collected by Benazir Shaheed Hospital’s administration and sent to National Institute of Health, Islamabad from that tested positive for the virus. He died on Monday evening in the hospital.

His body, according to Dr Sher Bahadur, was shifted to his native village during the small hours of Tuesday. He was buried in accordance with WHO’s SOPs for burial of corona carriers.

About six family members of the deceased attended the burial rites that health workers and TMA staff carried out amid tight security, said Dr Sher.

Published in Dawn, April 29th, 2020