Capital’s Covid cases cross 1,000 mark
Health officials urge people to adopt preventive measures
The coronavirus pandemic is resurrecting in the twin cities as a patient died in Rawalpindi along with 35 new cases while 132 new infections were reported in the capital territory on Sunday.
The tally of active Covid-19 cases crossed 1,000 mark in the capital, while the Rawalpindi administration said that a patient succumbed to the disease on Sunday while some 35 people reported back positive during the past 24 hours.
Some 27 infected people recovered from the virus in the Rawalpindi district on the same day as well, taking the total recoveries to 6,820. The collective figures of infections so far in Rawalpindi reached 7,312 with 390 deaths.
Further, Islamabad District Health Office (DHO) reported that some 87 men and 45 women were among the new cases. It added that the tally of infections so far has reached to 17,996 after the inclusion of fresh cases.
Further, the DHO report stated that 194 people have succumbed to the virus in Islamabad so far while as many as 16,680 have fully recovered. The number of active cases in the capital territory stands at 1,039.
Meanwhile, on the direction of Ministry of National Health Services, the Islamabad Capital Territory Administration (ICTA) has started smart lockdown in different streets of Islamabad to reduce transmission of the infection in selected streets and other sectors of Islamabad.
They also started taking actions on violation of SOPs related with the coronavirus while visiting marriage halls, markets and petrol pumps by its inspection teams. The administration also sealed schools, shops, workshop and restaurants on violation of SOPs.
The inspection teams also issued notices to marriage halls besides imposing fines on owners of different shops.
Commenting on the situation, an official of Ministry of National health Services said that several local level administrative decisions were made to control the disease. He advised the citizens to continue following the social distancing, use of mask and other precautionary measures to stop increasing local transmission of Covid-19 in Islamabad.
He said that the government had adopted effective strategy to combat Covid-19 that resulted reduction in corona cases in the country.
He said that the main focus of the strategy was to control the disease on one hand and maintaining business activities of small and poor traders on the other hand.
He said that all possible measures were adopted to control Covid-19 to avoid further load on already burdened health system of the country. He said that strategies were made to control coronavirus keeping in view the global information, focusing on data with integration of local data in a scientific way.
The official said that the ministry had also asked the schools administrations of Islamabad Capital Territory to strictly monitor the SOPs to ensure protection of students from Covid-19. He said that all schools had been clearly directed to strictly follow the SOPs announced by the government like social distancing, hand sanitizing or washing, wearing of face mask etc.
He asked the parents to regularly observe their school going children and in case of any illness avoid sending them school while teachers should also observe children's health on daily basis.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 19th, 2020.
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