PESHAWAR: The government has decided to take stern action against officials for showing laxity about Covid-19 vaccination as hospitalisations due to the virus is on the rise in Swat, Peshawar and Abbottabad.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported new 20 mortalities and 522 Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, a health department report said. It added that a total of 10,575 suspected people were tested for the virus.
Peshawar Commissioner Riaz Khan Mehsud directed stern disciplinary action against the officers and workers for lack of interest in the ongoing vaccination drive to inoculate 40 per cent of the population in the high-risk district.
KP reports 20 mortalities and 522 new virus cases
A press release said that he chaired a meeting that was attended by Deputy Commissioner Khalid Mahmood and other officials. The meeting decided to start legal proceedings against those officials, who were not taking interest in immunisation of people.
The commissioner asked the relevant officials to visit the vaccination centres and supervise the door-to-door campaign to accelerate the process and at the same time take measures to ensure smooth administration of jabs to the people.
According to him, people should be informed regarding significance of preventive measures including adherence to standard operating procedure and getting shots for their safety against the pandemic, which was getting alarming.
The medical teaching institutions in the province admitted 77 new patients during the last 24 hours. In Peshawar, Lady Reading Hospital has currently 190 patients, Hayatabad Medical Complex 128, Khyber Teaching Hospital 99, Covid-19 Hospital Nishartabad and Ayub Teaching Hospital Abbottabad 166 each while Saidu Group of Teaching Hospitals Swat has 204 patients.
A total of 1,650 patients were admitted to different hospitals in the province and 60 of them were on ventilators in critical condition. Physicians at the hospitals say that they may run out of beds and ventilators if the present trend of admissions continues for the next two days.
Presently, 350 ventilators are available for Covid-19 patients throughout the province but load of patients is concentrated in Abbottabad and Peshawar where bed occupancy is 69 per cent and 56 per cent respectively. Peshawar’s hospitals have been reporting bulk of the fatalities taking place in the province.
Peshawar reported six new deaths due to the virus which raised its total tally of fatalities to 2,326, about 50 per cent of the total 4,839 deaths occurred in the province. Positivity level in the provincial capital is 16.5 per cent. The hardest-hit district reported 209 new infections, making its total number of cases 58,104. Of the total 7,600 active Covid-19 patients in the province, Peshawar is home to 2,252. Overall positivity in the province is 6.1 per cent.
Five more coronavirus patients breathed their last in Mardan, which also reported 44 new patients. Positivity level in Mardan stood at 8 per cent. Five deaths and 27 fresh infections were reported from Abbottabad where positivity was 8.3 per cent. Two persons died in Dera Ismail Khan and one each in Kohat, Kurram, Hangu, Karak and Swat. Positivity in Swat, according to report, is three per cent.
A report said that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa allocated 2,385 beds for Covid-19 patients in government hospitals while some of the private hospitals were also admitting patients for free treatment under an agreement with the health department.
However, the availability of beds can become a big issue like it was witnessed in July last year when patients overcrowded the hospitals during peak of the pandemic. Keeping in view the fourth wave of the pandemic and detection of Delta and other foreign variants of the virus, the situation could only be controlled through vaccination and following precautionary measures, said health officials.
Published in Dawn, August 25th, 2021
