Businesses with unvaccinated workers threatened with shutdown

The Sindh government has warned of shutting down all businesses and industries in the province that have been operating with workers who have not been vaccinated against the coronavirus. The warning was issued by Chief Secretary Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah, who chaired a meeting at the Sindh Secretariat on Wednesday.

Officials of the health department briefed the meeting that so far 285 special centres have been set up across the province to vaccinate people against Covid-19. The meeting was also informed that so far 1,106,384 people in the province have been vaccinated against the virus.

Deputy commissioners posted in different districts of the province briefed the meeting that they have completed the vaccination of the revenue service personnel working under them. They said that now the staffers of other government departments are being inoculated.

The CS directed the DCs to increase the number of vaccination centres in their respective jurisdictions. He advised all the industrialists to get their factory workers vaccinated. He said the government is in the process of establishing vaccination centres in different industrial zones of the province.

He directed the DCs to ensure implementation of the standard operating procedures (SOPs) issued by the home department against the spread of the virus. He said that action should be taken against the people who violated these SOPs.

The CS also asked the commissioners posted in the Karachi and Hyderabad divisions to keep a check on the prices of essential food items in their respective areas to safeguard the interests of the consumers.

Covid kills 24 more

Covid-19 claimed 24 more lives in Sindh during the previous 24 hours, raising the death toll to 4,966 in the province. In the meantime, 947 patients were under treatment at different hospitals, of whom the condition of 883 was stated to be critical with 69 of them shifted onto ventilators.

In addition to 24 more deaths, 1,293 new cases of Covid-19 emerged during the previous 24 hours after 22,043 tests were conducted. The information to this effect was provided by Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Wednesday in his daily statement on the pandemic situation in the province. He explained that with 4,966 deaths so far, the fatality rate of Covid-19 in Sindh stood at 1.6 per cent.

Shah said the diagnosis of 1,293 cases through 22,043 samples constituted a 5.9 per cent current detection rate. He added that so far 4,031,934 tests had been conducted in Sindh, against which 313,042 cases were diagnosed, of which 91 per cent or 284,695 patients had recovered, including 1,273 during the previous 24 hours.

The CM said there were currently 23,381 patients of Covid-19 in Sindh, of whom 22,379 were in home isolation, 22 at isolation centres and 947 at hospitals.

According to Shah, of the 1,293 new cases, 764 belonged to Karachi. Of them, 277 belonged to District East, 159 to District Central, 108 to District Korangi, 101 to District South, 65 to District Malir and 54 to District West.

In the rest of Sindh, Hyderabad had 62 new cases, Sukkur 36, Dadu 26, Ghotki 25, Tando Muhammad Khan 22, Jamshoro and Shikarpur 19 each, Badin and Kamber-Shahdadkot 17 each, Thatta 16, Naushehro Feroz and Shaheed Benazirabad 15 each, Larkana and Mirpurkhas 12 each, Khairpur and Sujawal 11 each, Jacobabad 10, Matiari nine, Tando Allahyar and Tharparkar eight each, Umerkot seven, Kashmore five, and Sanghar had four new cases.

The CM urged the people of Sindh to abide by the standard operating procedures issued by the government to prevent themselves and others from the novel coronavirus.