RAWALPINDI: After more than a month, a patient suffering from Covid-19 died in Rawalpindi district and seven others were diagnosed with the disease. Positivity ratio in the district was traced at 0.6 percent.

Health experts fear that the virus may be spreading again and authorities concerned have been directed to launch the door-to-door vaccination drive from June 20.

Deputy Commissioner Tahir Farooq was also diagnosed with Covid-19 and is isolated in his house.

Maria Bibi (23), resident of Murree was brought to Holy Family Hospital on June 15 and she died on Thursday. There are 37 active patients in the district out of whom 30 are home isolated.

Talking to Dawn, District Officer (Health) Dr Waqar Ahmed said the number of patients has been gradually increasing since the last few days. “There is a dire need to adopt safety measures including washing hands, social distancing etc,” he said, during the last two months, the number of patients had reduced to two or three but now, this number is increasing.

He said if the number of patients was zero for at least 21 days then we would say the virus ended however this is not the case.

People had to adopt safety measures to avoid further spread of the deadly virus, he said, adding there was need to vaccinate people. He said that the administration was working towards providing all possible facilities to people to get vaccinated in centres.

“The new vaccination drive for two weeks will be launched in the district from June 20 and a target had been set to complete the vaccination of 95pc of the population. At present, there are 4.2 million people eligible for vaccination against Covid-19. As many as 90pc people have been fully vaccinated in the district while 93pc got their first dose of vaccination,” he said.

He said that we had target to vaccinate second dose to further five percent population. “We will give booster dose as many as 20,000 people a day in two weeks,” Dr Ahmed said.

It may be mentioned here that since the outbreak of Covid-19 in March 2020, about 43,166 people were diagnosed with the virus and 1,334 people died after contracting it. On March 16, 2022, the PTI-led government lifted all Covid-19 related restrictions across the country while claiming that the country had come close to “eliminating the pandemic”.

It had also decided that all restrictions imposed on weddings, indoor dining and markets should be lifted.

Published in Dawn,June 17th, 2022