SAPM pays homage to frontline health workers

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health Services Dr Faisal Sultan paid homage on Thursday to the frontline health workers for putting their lives at risk to ensure medical care to coronavirus patients at hospitals.

Addressing the ceremony to pay homage to frontline health workers, the SAPM said that preventive measures had been taken to avoid the spread of coronavirus, including closure of educational institutions and implementation of the standard operating procedures (SOPs).

“They [health workers] fully contributed to creating awareness and controlling the coronavirus with full commitment and perseverance,” Dr Sultan said. He added that the government had adopted an effective strategy to combat Covid-19.

“The main focus of the strategy is to control the disease, on the one hand, and maintaining business activities, on the other,” he said. All federal and provincial and public and private institutions were playing remarkable role under the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), he added.

He said that measures would be 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 virus, keeping in view the global information, focusing on data with integration of local data in a scientific way.

Meanwhile, the national tally of total active Covid-19 cases in Pakistan on Thursday reached 34,049 with 2,482 more people tested positive for the virus while 2,122 people recovered from the coronavirus during the last 24 hours, according to the daily update issued by NCOC.

The NCOC said that 50 patients, 45 of whom were under treatment in hospitals, including 27 on ventilators, while five at their homes or in quarantines died on Wednesday. Most of the deaths, it added, had occurred in Punjab followed by the Sindh.

According to the NCOC bulletin, 40,509 tests were conducted across the country on Thursday, including 13,699 in Sindh, 15,562 in Punjab, 4,798 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P), 5,167 in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), 599 in Balochistan, 413 in Gilgit Baltistan (G-B), and 271 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).

Since the pandemic outbreak, a total of 495,075 cases were detected, however, 450,515 of them have recovered from the disease so far, making it a significant recovery ratio of over 86%. The nationwide death toll stood at 10,511 on Thursday.

Among them, 3,653 perished in Sindh, 19 on Wednesday; 4,203 in Punjab, 19 deaths in past 24 hours; 1,702 in K-P, 7 of them died in hospitals on Wednesday; 434 in ICT, 2 of them died in hospitals on Wednesday; 186 in Balochistan, 101 in G-B and 232 in AJK, 3 of them on Wednesday.

A total of 6,964,337 corona tests have been conducted so far, while 626 hospitals are equipped with Covid facilities. Some 2,771 corona patients were admitted in hospitals across the country, the NCOC said in its daily bulletin.

APP