The district health officer of Lahore has been placed under suspension and an inquiry ordered to penalise all those responsible for providing fictitious figures of coronavirus, said a health department spokesperson.

The action has been taken after an inquiry panel proposed suspending the DHO and the deputy district health officers (DDHOs) of eight towns in the city after they were found guilty of reporting fake/fictitious Covid-19 cases.

In the initial report, action has been proposed against the officers by the inquiry panel headed by the deputy secretary (general) of the Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department (P&SHD) Punjab. According to the panel, the allegations proved that the officers had made 1,883 suspicious entries on Covid-19 dashboard from Aug 23 to 31.

There was also the very serious allegation that 159 out of 1,883 samples of the suspected Covid-19 patients were not ‘human samples’, an official privy to the information told Dawn.

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