Ag Agencies
KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Sunday cautioned it was “too soon to declare victory” against the coronavirus amid an apparent decline in Covid-19 infections and deaths observed nationwide.
His comments came as Pakistan reported 2,521 new cases of Covid-19, taking the tally to 248,872. Seventy-four more people lost their lives to the disease, raising the death toll to 5,197, according to official figures, which demonstrate a marked decline in the number of daily cases during the same period last month — which saw 6,472 infections on June 12.
But Shah expressed that he was dissatisfied with the number of tests being carried out and urged people to get tested en masse. “Sindh is conducting twice as many tests of the coronavirus as compared to other provinces,” Shah said in a media briefing at the Chief Minister’s House. “I have the data till July 11, according to which we conducted 11,790 tests per million [population]. Punjab carried out 5,359 tests, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 4,898 and Balochistan 4,316 tests.”
He said a meeting of the National Coordination Committee, which is chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan, has not been called for a number of days while National Command and Operation Centre meetings had been attended by the Chief Secretary.
Shah credited his government for taking steps to curb the spread of the coronavirus since February 26. “From the start of the pandemic I have maintained that the disease will spread and we cannot stop it but we can reduce its speed,” he added.
The Chief Minister further said his government was increasing hospital facilities but it was difficult to control the pandemic without an effective vaccine, as an effective treatment had yet to be developed.
Shah’s briefing came a day after Minister for Planning, Development and Reforms Asad Umar credited the Centre’s “smart lockdown” approach with reducing the number of critical Covid-19 patients by 28 per cent. “On June 20, there were 2,969 corona patients on oxygen out of which 546 were on ventilators, however by the grace of Allah Almighty, the number of patients on oxygen has come down to 1,762 whereas that on ventilators has reduced to 394 patients showing a decline of 28 per cent,” Umar said in a tweet. Meanwhile, the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid’s Tariq Basheer Cheema contracted the coronavirus, Geo News reported on Sunday. He was admitted to PIMs hospital in Islamabad on Saturday after testing positive.
Cheema is the Federal Minister for Housing and Works and his party is Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s key coalition partner at the Centre. Cheema joins a long list of lawmakers to have contracted the contagious disease.
Last week, the Prime Minister Imran Khan’s aide on health, Dr Zafar Mirza, also tested positive for Covid-19.
