PESHAWAR: Six more people died of coronavirus in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as the positivity of Covid-19 swabs swelled to 19.6 per cent in Peshawar, which recorded four of the total deaths and 133 of the total 331 cases recorded in the province on Tuesday.

A report of World Health Oorganisation said that Peshawar was the second on the countrywide positivity table of Covid-19. The district is also home to 17,978 infected people of the total 47,701 confirmed cases of the pandemic, started early this year in the province. The capital city also accounts for 654 deaths of the total 1,375 witnessed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Peshawar has registered 1,676, most of the 4,196 active cases, and 15, 648 recovered patients, the highest number of the total 42,130 recovered people in the province so far.

Peshawar records 19.6 per cent positivity rate

The provincial capital has 39 of the total 41 persons on ventilators while the case fatality rate (CFR) here is 3.6 per cent against the overall 2.8 per cent. Nowshera has 3.9 per cent CFR, Swabi and Swat 4.5 per cent, Karak 4.8 per cent, Bajaur 5 per cent and Abbottabad 4.1 per cent but Peshawar stays in the limelight because of its highest mortalities and incidence.

Swat is the second district of concern with 104 deaths and 3,328 infected persons. It has 62 active cases and 3,162 recovered patients. Abbottabad has registered 102 deaths and 2,494 positive cases while in Mardan 62 persons have died of the virus so far.

Of late, Dir Lower is showing signs of more infectivity as it recorded 51 cases on Tuesday, according to a health department report. The district has so far registered 43 mortalities and 1,909 cases but most cases are surfacing in the second wave like Mansehra, which remained calm with regard to Covid-19 in the first phase, but emerges as one of the hard-hit areas in the second wave of the ailment.

During the last 24 hours, Mansehra reported one death and 30 new cases, bringing its total tally of dead people to 25 and cases to 1,807. Health authorities say that they are focusing on all districts because the infection is widespread and the main cities show more deaths and cases because there are big hospitals.

During the past one week, the Public Health Reference Laboratory at Khyber Medical University conducted a total of 10,400 tests, with average positivity of 5.7 per cent. According to officials, more than 70 per cent of those tested in KMU were from Peshawar. The government is further strengthening its 17 public sector Covid-19 laboratories in different districts to enhance level of tests and diagnose more infected people.

“We need to conduct more tests in the areas, which are reporting more positive cases in the second wave. Therefore, not only Peshawar, Swat, Abbottabad and Mansehra are being covered but all districts, especially suspected people in merged districts, are being tested to know the quantum of the ailment. The province has been conducting 5,000 tests on average daily for the past 10 days but WHO is urging health department to scale it up to 8,000,” said officials.

They said that the province had the capacity to conduct more tests and isolate positive patients to prevent transmission of virus to the general population in all districts and minimise the human losses during the second wave of the pandemic.

Published in Dawn, December 2nd, 2020