Half of city’s population infected

Panic gripped the port city as record 17 deaths due to novel Coronavirus disease were reported in a day sending people rushing to vaccination centres again.

Almost half of the city's population has been infected with Covid-19 virus, the provincial health authorities disclosed on Thursday.

According to the data shared by the Sindh Health Department, Covid positivity rate for Karachi was at 46.58, while Hyderabad was at 17.27 per cent. "With this percentage, if we walk around and calculate considering Karachi's population means, half of them are positive," said Qasim Siraj Soomro, the parliamentary secretary on health. "Scary conditions," he added.

The health professionals have warned the citizens to strictly follow the SOP. They said that the situation will be critical in the coming days.

"No one follows SOP," commented a senior health department official. "The government cannot do everything," he added, saying several officials in his department were recently infected.

Soaring death toll

As many as 17 more patients of Coronavirus disease died overnight lifting the death toll to 7,727 and 3,739 new cases emerged when 17,002 tests were conducted. A statement issued from the CM House said that the current fatalities constitute a 1.5 per cent death rate.

The overall detection rate for the province was assessed at 22 per cent when 17,002 samples were tested which detected 3,739 cases of the pandemic viral fever. So far 7,419,686 tests have been conducted against which 514,863 cases were diagnosed, of which 91.9 per cent or 473,340 patients have recovered, including 332 overnight.

The statement said that currently, 33,796 patients were under treatment, of them 33,398 were in home isolation, 30 at isolation centers, and 368 at different hospitals.

Condition of 306 patients was stated to be critical, including 21 shifted to ventilators. According to the statement, out of 3,739 new cases, 3,289 have been detected from Karachi. Hyderabad has 145, NausheroFeroze 34, Jamshoro 29, Tharparkar 20, Tando Muhammad Khan 19, Badin 16, Dadu 15, Thatta, Umerkot and Sanghar 12 each, Larkana 11, Tando Allahyar, Jacobabad, Khairpur and Mirpurkhas 10 each, Shikarpur nine, Ghotki five, Shaheed Benazirbad four and Matiari one.

Vaccination: Sharing vaccination data the statement said that 32,462,394 vaccinations have been administered upto January 18th, and added during the last 24 hours 237,284 vaccines were inoculated - in total 32,699,678 vaccines have administered which constituted 59.01 percent of the vaccine eligible population.

The chief minister urged people of the province to follow SOPs.