close
Friday March 29, 2024

Five more die of coronavirus

By Bureau report
November 26, 2020

PESHAWAR: Five more people died and 514 others tested positive for the coronavirus in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Wednesday.

Officials said the number of positive cases in the province hit 45,828, with the majority of these cases, 17129, reported from the provincial capital.

In KP, Peshawar has lost the highest number of people, 633, due to coronavirus, followed by Swat with 104 fatalities.

Of the five fatalities, two each were reported from Peshawar and Abbottabad and one Mansehra. In Abbottabad, 100 people have died of infectious disease so far.

The second wave of the viral infection has badly affected some of the places, including Peshawar, Abbottabad, Mansehra, Lowe Chitral Lower, Upper Chitral, Lower Dir, Tank, Dera Ismail Khan, Khyber, etc.

Some health experts were of the view that though the infectious disease had affected people in all parts of the province, certain cases are out of the reach of the government radar due to poor surveillance and lack of proper health services.

Though the government had installed PCR labs in some of the teaching hospitals in the province, patients still feel shy and avoid to visit these fatalities for their investigations.

Despite so much knowledge and awareness about the viral infection, some people had still associate stigma with the disease and don’t want to be labelled for coronavirus

Meanwhile, the applicants and their parents expressed concern over the failure of Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) to postpone the medical and dental colleges admission test (MDCAT) and feared majority of the students would get infected after appearing in the test.

The health experts had already alerted the government and advised it to postpone the entrance test and find an alternative way to save thousands of applicants from the viral infection.

Prof Dr Syed Amjad Taqweem, a senior physician, had stated that if one Covid-19 patient entered the examination centre, he or she would infect several others.

The PMC has scheduled November 29 for MDCAT.

Prof Amjad Taqweem stated that the 1918 influenza bout had a deadly second wave after quarantine restrictions were lifted.

He said the reason why there was a second wave of the flu is still debated, but is usually more associated with broader public health policy failures, and issues related to the war, such as soldiers travelling across Europe.