Coronavirus Update: No respite in Sindh

By Mukhtar Alam
(Pakistan News & Features Services)

Sindh witnessed no decrease in its daily COVID-19 deaths for the second day running, as the provincial health authorities on July 7 confirmed yet another 42 fatalities, with 1,388 new positive cases, taking the death tally to 1,614 and total infections to 97,626. 

According to official data, Sindh’s number of daily deaths had almost doubled on the previous day with 46 deaths on July 6. An average about 34 patients died daily during a period from July 1 to 7. 

According to the health department’s daily COVID-19 summary, a total of 9,317 tests were conducted during the last 24 hours, pushing the number of people so far tested against the lethal virus to 524,222 for the province which meant that the overall infection rate in Sindh remained about 19%. 

In the meantime, a Sindh health department website, updated at 8 pm on July 7, showed the number of coronavirus confirmed cases as 97,805, with 1,642 deaths, while number of people having recovered from the diseases cam as 55,620. 

The Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, in his daily statement on COVID-19, said that 650 patients were reported critically ill during the last 24 hours ending at 9 am on July 7 and 76 of them were put on ventilators.

According to reports, the daily infection rate was found about 15% on July 7, against 14% of July 6, which was 20.75% on July 5. 

Karachi reported the maximum number of 759 among the districts of Sindh, followed by Khairpur (86), Hyderabad (71), Sanghar (68), Umerkot (66), Shaheed Benazirabad (64), Sukkur (48), Kashmore (41), Badin (38), Jamshoro (37), Naushero Feroze (27), Matiari (16), Mirpurkhas (16), Tando Allahyar (14), Shikarpur (10), Jacobabad (7), Tando Mohammad Khan (7), Larkana (4), Dadu (4), Kambar Shahdadkot (3), and Ghotki (2). 

Of the 42 infected people who died on July 7, 38 belonged to Karachi, including 29 men and 9 women. The men were aged from 28 to 88 years while women were in the age brackets of 55 to 84 years. 

Hyderabad registered deaths of two women and one man, who were aged from 55 to 93, while 70-year-old man died of COVID at Khairpur. However, health department did not provide details of the deceased people’s hospitalization or their isolation at homes. 

According to the official data, Karachi had the maximum number of 75,204 cases of infection, with 1,372 deaths, since February 26 when it reported the first COVID case of the country, followed by Hyderabad (3,408 with 52 deaths), Sukkur (2,959, with 22 deaths), Ghotki (2,549, with 10 deaths), Khairpur (2,016, with 10), Larkana (1,757, with 29 deaths), Shaheed Benazirabad (1,001, with 5 deaths) and other districts. 

It was further learnt that 22 COVID-19 laboratories across the province performed 9,317 tests, against their collective capacity of 9,300, during the last 24 hours, out of which 1,974 were found positive.

Meanwhile a WHO Sindh sub-office report said that COVID-19 laboratories at Karachi conducted 8,137 tests on July 6, while those at Hyderabad performed 4,287 tests, followed by Sukkur (56). The percentage of positive was highest in Karachi with 30. 

Only 5% of the positive cases were admitted in hospitals, while one per cent in government isolation centres and the remaining (95%) active cases were in home-isolation.