Sindh COVID-19 death toll reaches 118 after six more deaths in city

Six more people lost their lives due to the novel coronavirus in Sindh, all of them in Karachi, between Thursday and Friday while 662 people, including 446 in the city, tested positive for the viral disease, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said in his daily video message on Friday.

However a significant number of the new cases in Karachi include those who arrived in the city from abroad.

“As many as 662 new cases of coronavirus have been diagnosed while six more people lost their lives during last 24 hours in Sindh. The death toll due to COVID-19 has reached 118 or 1.76 percent of the total patients,” the CM said, adding that all the six deaths due to the contagious disease were reported in the provincial capital.

He said 3,384 tests had been conducted, against which 662 new cases emerged, of which 446 were from Karachi. He added that so far 57,761 samples had been tested against which 6,675 cases of COVID-19 were diagnosed.

“At present 5,262 patients are under treatment, of them 4,044 or 77 per cent are at homes, 733 at isolation centers and 485 at different hospitals,” he said and added that 45 patients were in a critical state and 16 of them were on ventilators.

Sharing details of Pakistanis stranded abroad who managed to reach the Karachi airport, the CM said 483 people landed at the Jinnah International Airport via three flights from Dubai, Sharjah and Colombo. He stated that 190 passengers were diagnosed as positive when tested for COVID-19. Of those 190 positive cases, 92 belonged to Sindh, 56 to Punjab, 24 to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and 18 to Balochistan.

Giving the break-up of the 446 new cases in Karachi, Shah said 173 new patients of COVID-19 were diagnosed in District Malir where the 190 passengers who arrived at the airport had also been kept, while 92 new cases emerged in District East, 70 in District South, 56 in District Central, 33 in District West and 22 in District Korangi.

If the 190 cases of stranded Pakistanis are not counted, the new local cases of COVID-19 in Sindh would be 472. “This figure shows that the pandemic is still playing havoc in Sindh,” the CM said and added that the situation called for observance of social distancing and adopting the standard operating procedures of the World Health Organisation.

Seventeen new cases were diagnosed in Ghotki, 19 in Hyderabad, 11 in Jacobabad, 23 in Larkana, 15 in Shikarpur and six in Sukkur districts, Shah said.

He also paid tribute to the doctors, paramedics, laboratory staff and other officials of the health department for providing selfless services during the pandemic times. He asked everyone to pay respect to them.

The CM remarked that the virus was spreading day by day and extra precautionary measures must be taken all over Sindh to contain it. He also prayed for the early recovery of all the patients.