Amidst talk of third wave of Covid-19, no death reported in Sindh

Despite the rising Covid-19 cases in the country, which is being dubbed as the third wave of the pandemic in Pakistan, no death was reported in Sindh during 24 hours between Friday and Saturday.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said this on Saturday in his daily statement on the pandemic situation in Sindh.

He added that a total of 220 new cases of Covid-19 had emerged in the province during the previous 24 hours, after 8,695 tests were conducted. With no death during the 24 hours, the death toll due to the infectious disease in Sindh remained at 4,453.

Shah explained that the diagnosis of 220 new cases against 8,695 samples constituted a 2.5 per cent current detection rate. So far 3,136,213 tests for Covid-19 had been conducted in Sindh, against which 261,178 cases were diagnosed, of which 96.7 per cent or 252,674 patients had recovered, including 49 during the previous 24 hours, he added.

The CM said that currently 4,051 patients were battling Covid-19 in the province, of whom 3,757 were in home isolation, 10 at isolation centres and 284 at different hospitals. He added that the condition of 255 patients was stated to be critical and 41 of them had been shifted onto ventilators.

According to Shah, of the 220 new cases, 99 were detected in Karachi, including 61 in District East, 12 in District South, nine each in District Korangi and District Malir, six in District Central and two in District West.

In the rest of Sindh, Larkana and Matiari had 15 new cases each, Hyderabad 14, Badin eight, Mirpurkhas and Tando Muhammad Khan seven each, Jacobabad and Thatta six each, Ghotki five, Jamshoro and Khairpur four each, Kamber-Shahdadkot, Sujawal, Tando Allahyar and Naushehro Feroz three each, Umerkot two and Shaheed Benazirabad had one new case. The CM urged the people of the province to follow all the standard operating procedures to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Third wave

On Thursday, the chief of the National Command and Operation Centre, Asad Umar, issued a grim warning that the third Covid-19 wave had begun in Pakistan.

Speaking to the media, he said, "Yes, absolutely. There is no doubt that the third wave has begun. Basically, the phenomena driving it is the spread of the UK strain."

Umar said that the districts where there was a higher positivity ratio had a high number of Pakistanis living in the UK. "We had genome sequencing done from the NIH [National Institute of Health] and the dominant strain is the UK strain."

He explained that the UK strain was already known to transmit more easily, compared to the original Wuhan strain. "And now with a new report, we have also found that the mortality rate is higher," he added.

Umar said that since Pakistan's first death in March last year and until now in 2021, "our fatality rate saw a clear and sustained increase and we had speculated that it may be linked to this strain but now the international report establishes it. So this is a very dangerous situation that is developing."

The minister said that in the region in general as well, there was a rapid spread that was being witnessed. Umar said sampling done to determine the proportion of cases that can be attributed to the new strain showed that more than half of the cases are of the UK variant, while in certain cities, the number goes as high as two-thirds of all cases. Pakistan crossed the 600,000 mark on Friday after 2,701 new cases were reported in the previous 24 hours. The rise in the number of cases is alarming for policymakers since it was only a month ago when Pakistan had crossed the 500,000 mark. On the other hand, the total active coronavirus cases stand at 18,703, while 568,065 people have recovered in the country.

All parts of Pakistan — particularly major cities of Punjab — were in the grip of the new wave of coronavirus which could viciously engulf the entire country in case of poor compliance with the SOPs, the PM’s Special Assistant on Health, Dr Faisal Sultan, stated in a video message shared with the media on Friday.