Pakistan lockdown extended by 15 days
islamabad — The government on Friday decided to extend the ongoing lockdown for another 15 days till May 9 to contain the spread of coronavirus in the country.
Speaking at a news conference in Islamabad, Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar said the government is also making all-out efforts to enhance testing capacity to ascertain the actual number of infected people in the country, reports The Express Tribune.
“If people act irresponsibly and do not follow precautionary measures, then we will be compelled to impose more restrictions,” he warned.
Over 250 health workers infected
At least 253 healthcare providers and medical workers have been infected with coronavirus in Pakistan so far, according to data issued by the National Emergency Operation Centre.
Based on the report which has data up until Wednesday, 124 doctors, 39 nurses and 90 health workers have been infected by the virus in the country,
Dawn News reported on Friday. Ninety-two of these healthcare providers are in isolation, 125 are admitted in hospitals while 33 have recovered and have been discharged.
The first known Covid-19 fatality among the local medical community occurred in Gilgit Baltistan when a young doctor, Usama Riaz, succumbed to the disease last month.
Of the 253 cases, Punjab has reported 83 infections, Sindh 56, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 30, Balochistan 32, Islamabad 31, Azad Kashmir four, and Gilgit Baltistan 17.
Sindh restricts taraweeh prayers
The Sindh government on Friday banned congregational prayers on the eve of the holy month of Ramadan, heeding the advice of doctors who are urging the federal government to tighten its restrictions on mosque congregations.
“The Sindh government has decided people should offer Ramadan’s Taraweeh (evening) prayers at home,” Sindh’s Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said in a video message on Friday. Shah said he was acting on the advice of doctors. “Our hospitals are overwhelmed with patient inflows; we don’t want our health system to collapse,” he said.
Rise in local transmision cases
As the number of coronavirus cases in Pakistan has increased to 11,155 with 237 deaths, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) has revealed
that 79 per cent of these infections were caused by local transmission.
As the nature of the infection has undergone this change, the government has decided to introduce track and trace system under which random testing of people will start in a few days, reports Dawn News.
During the first week of the current month, it was being claimed that almost 90 per cent patients were travellers from foreign countries and there were fewer cases caused by local transmission of the virus. However, fresh data showed that only 21 per cent cases have been reported in foreign travellers.
Executive Director of the National Institute of Health Prof Aamer Ikram told
Dawn News on Thursday that as the whole situation had changed due to local transmission, it had been decided to change the policy to tackle the issue. —