Four more lose battle against Covid-19

75 new coronavirus cases surface in federal capital

ISLAMABAD/RAWALPINDI:

Four more people lost the battle of life against the deadly coronavirus in the Rawalpindi district while health officials confirmed that 75 new cases were reported in the federal capital during the last 24 hours.

According to an official of the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), as many as 62 cases were reported on Sunday, while 89 cases were reported on Saturday. He said that so far, 133,839 cases had surfaced from the federal capital, along 1,004 deaths and 131,833 patients who had recovered completely.

He said that the government had already waived off the booster shot fee for those visiting abroad, and now they could get a free booster after showing their documents. This booster was free for the general public, he added.

He said that on the direction of the Ministry of National Health Services, the district administration of Islamabad had continued surveillance of different areas of the capital to reduce transmission of the infection in selected streets and other sectors. They also started taking action against violations of standard operating procedures (SOPs) related to the coronavirus, after visits by inspection teams to marriage halls, markets, and petrol pumps. The inspection teams have been directed to issue notices to marriage halls, in addition to imposing fines on the owners of different shops in case of violation of SOPs.

Commenting on the situation, an official of the ministry said that several local-level administrative decisions had been made to control the disease. He advised the citizens to continue to follow social distancing, to avidly use masks, and to take all precautionary measures to stop the increased transmission of COVID-19 in the city.

In Rawalpindi, as many as 32 more people tested positive for the fatal coronavirus during the last 24 hours, raising the tally of confirmed cases to 46,081 in the Rawalpindi district.

As per the latest data released by the District Health Authority (DHA) on Monday, among the new patients, seven belonged to the Rawalpindi Cantonment, six were from Rawal town, five were from Potohar town, three were from Taxila, two cases each were from Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Attock, while one case each came from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KPK), Jhelum, Mandi Bahwudin, Murree and Gujjar Khan.

“Presently, 56 patients are admitted to six health facilities, including 33 in the Rawalpindi Institute of Urology and Transplantation (RIUT), 16 in the Fauji Foundation Hospital (FFH), four in the Benazir Bhutto Hospital (BBH) and one each in the Holy Family Hospital (HFH), Hearts International and Bahria Hospital."

As many as 5,508,131 people, including 44,625 health workers, had so far been vaccinated against the fatal disease since the start of the vaccination drive on March 10, 2021", the data revealed.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, February 22^nd, 2022.