308 COVID-19 cases in a day from twin cities

Rawalpindi: The number of patients being tested positive for coronavirus illness, COVID-19 in this region of the country is on a significant rise for the last one month or so particularly after reopening of educational institutions but in the last one week, a tremendous increase in the number of cases from Islamabad Capital Territory and Rawalpindi district has been recorded.

In the last three days, as many as 765 new patients have been reported from the twin cities while in the last 24 hours, 308 patients have been tested positive for COVID-19 and it happened for the first time after December 18 last year that over 300 patients have been confirmed positive for the disease in a day from ICT and Rawalpindi.

It is important that the number of cases reported per day on average from the region has dropped down to 108 in the last week of January, at the time of reopening of educational institutions.

A number of health experts have expressed that the government should review its decision of reopening educational institutions as the number of cases has started going up sharply. The number of patients being tested positive per day on average has become more than double in the last one week as compared to the number of patients being confirmed positive before reopening of schools.

According to District Health Officer ICT Dr. Muhammad Zaeem Zia, as many as 251 patients were tested positive against 4,057 tests run in the federal capital in the last 24 hours recording a positivity rate as 6.18 per cent. Both the positivity rate and the number of cases from ICT are the highest in a day in the last three months or so.

It is worth mentioning here that before the reopening of educational institutions, the positivity rate from the federal capital has dropped down to below 1.5 per cent, in January this year. In the last month, as many as 4,200 new patients have been reported from the twin cities.

After confirmation of 308 new cases in the last 24 hours, the total number of patients so far reported from the region has got to 58615 while another three deaths from the region has taken the death toll to 1,153.

Data collected by ‘The News’ on Saturday reveals that another 251 patients have been tested positive for the disease in the last 24 hours from the federal capital taking the tally to 45,329 of which 42,726 have recovered. The number of active cases of the disease was 2,097 in ICT on Saturday. The virus has so far claimed a total of 506 lives in the federal capital. In the last 24 hours, 57 new patients have been tested positive from Rawalpindi district taking the tally to 13,286 of which 12,281 have achieved a cure. To date, a total of 647 patients from the district have died of COVID-19.

On Saturday, 38 patients from the district were undergoing treatment at the healthcare facilities while the number of confirmed patients in home isolation was 320.