LAHORE: With 111 more deaths across the province during the last 24 hours, the occupancy of ventilators dropped to 81 per cent in Lahore’s both public and private hospitals.

This ratio remained on average above 95pc since the third wave took an ugly shape in Lahore. Of the 111 fatalities, 37 took place in Lahore while most of the others were reported from Rawalpindi, Multan and Faisalabad.

However, 260 critical patients of the virus were [still] struggling for life on ventilators of both public and private hospitals of the city due to severity of the infections and complications.

Of them, 220 were in the ICUs of the state-run hospitals and others in the private sector hospitals of the city.

111 more die of Covid

Of 220 critical patients, 73 were under-treatment at the ventilators of the Mayo Hospital followed by 48 at Jinnah Hospital, 38 at Lahore General Hospital and 32 at the Services.

According to the official figures, the provincial capital, which has been reporting an alarming number of deaths and new infections, has witnessed a decrease in admissions of the Covid patients.

The data showed that the beds occupancy in high dependency units of both public and private sector hospitals designated for the Covid patients has dropped to 56pc only.

In state-run hospitals of the city, the bed occupancy in HDUs has declined to 58.4pc and in Intensive Care Units 83pc.

It was Services Hospital Lahore [alone] from amongst government teaching hospitals where all the ventilators were occupied by critical patients of the virus. Other hospitals were reporting nearly 90pc ventilator occupancy whereas this ratio dropped to 33.3pc at Kot Khawaja Saeed Hospital which had witnessed 100pc occupancy during the last three weeks or so.

The province witnessed a massive decline in the number of new infections as only 1,600 people tested positive for the virus during the last 24 hours.

Of them, 727 were recorded in Lahore which has been reporting over 1,500 daily new infections during the last four weeks or so.

On the other hand, there were some reports that one of the main reasons behind the decline in new positive cases was the decrease in Covid test ratio.

The medical experts were of the view that the health authorities were conducting tests which were 50pc less than the disease burden.

Particularly, the test ratio decreased from 35,000 to 18,000, the experts said.

The Tuesday’s Covid update released by the Punjab government supported the assertion of the medical experts as the health authorities had performed only 14,137 tests during the last 24 hours.

Meanwhile, the number of Covid cases was also increasing in the contact tracing of the positive people.

The data showed 1,109 people tested positive for the virus out of total 9,015 contacts during the last 24 hours in Punjab.

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2021