Trashing rumors of a lockdown amid the fifth wave of Covid pandemic with the rise in Omicron cases, the Sindh Health Minister Azra Fazal Pechuho, said the provincial government will opt for smart lockdowns only.
Higher percentage of vaccinated people have made the population more resilient towards the virus, she said pointing out that over 80 per cent of schoolchildren have been administered ant-Covid jabs.
After decades of combating the crippling poliovirus, the Sindh Health Minister Azra Fazal Pechuho, expressed hope that the province can be declared polio-free if the progress on immunisation continued.
"We are moving towards becoming polio-free," she said while talking to the media in Hyderabad on Thursday after chairing two separate meetings with the health officials. "We have remained polio-free last year, yet our efforts should continue and it should not mean that the poliovirus can be neglected."
According to her, the last polio case surfaced in the province in July, 2020, and there was no case in 2021. The polio environmental samples are also turning out to be negative since July year.
The minister told that one of the two meetings she chaired today specifically concentrated on polio vis-a-vis the upcoming Sub National Immunization Day (SNID) exercises which will be held this month Pechuho played down any imminent specter of imposing lockdown in the province to prevent the spread of Omicron.
According to her, shutting down entire businesses, offices and educational institutions will become inevitable if a large number of coronavirus infected people begin to be admitted in the hospitals.
She informed that more than 170 cases of Omicron variant have been detected in Karachi so far and that the infection rate is apparently increasing. "The indicators suggest the rapid spread of the omicron."
The minister said the health department does not carry out genomic studies of all the positive cases but only of those with a history of foreign travel. She added that generally, the positivity rate is also increasing with 500 cases reported in the province on Wednesday. "By next one or two months, the omicron cases are likely to be in thousands."
Published in The Express Tribune, January 7th, 2022.
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