KARACHI - Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Friday said that 535 patients of coronavirus had recovered in the province.
“While at the same time, 817 new cases have been reported while 12 more patients have died in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 255. “The situation seems to be critical in the sense that not only more and more people are recovering from the pandemic, but the ratio of new patients and death ratio are also on the rise,” he stated in a statement issued from the CM’s House.
Elaborating further on the situation, Syed Murad Ali Shah said that for the first time our recovery rate had jumped from 22 percent to 24 percent when 535 patients had been cured and discharged from the hospitals.
Simultaneously, he said, the number of new patients which were 758 on Thursday increased to 817 on Friday.
“Increase in the number of new cases depends on the number of tests conducted-when the number of tests are increased, surge in the number of new patients is noticed,” the CM said, and added, “This shows that the infected people exist and they keep infecting others, therefore number of patients keep multiplying every day.”
Talking about deaths from the disease, Syed Murad Ali Shah said that 75 people had died from May 9 to May 14. “This shows that on average more than 12 patients lose their lives every day – this is not a good sign and needs to be controlled through self-protection and administrative measures,” the chief minister said. Similarly, he said, despite the fact that 535 patients had recovered by Friday morning and discharged from the hospitals, at the same time 817 new patients were admitted. “This shows that the pressure on our health system, which should have been decreased with the discharge of 535 people, increased further with the arrival of 817 new patients,” he said.
Syed Murad Ali Shah said that the patients who had been kept in isolation at their homes were being looked after by doctors, and in case of an emergency were shifted to hospitals. “My strategy is to contain the virus by isolating the patients and stop its further spread by implementing social distancing and other SOPs,” he said, and added this would be possible only when people would cooperate and understand gravity of the situation.
Giving details of the patients, he said of 11,055 who were under treatment presently 9,651 or 87 percent of them were in home isolation; 887 or eight percent were at isolation centres and 517 at different hospitals. “The figures show that five percent of the total number of patients are in hospitals, of the 21 percent or 107 are in critical condition while 35 have been put on the ventilators,” he said.
According to the CM statement, out of 817 new cases, 567 belonged to Karachi. “139 belong to District East, 125 to Central, 115 to District South, 102 to Malir, 52 to West and 34 to Korangi,” Murad explained.
He said that at present there were 2,470 patients in South, 2,324 in East, 1,925 in Central, 1,508 in Malir, 982 in Korangi and 1,289 patients were in District West of the provincial capital.
Sharing the data of other districts, Syed Murad Ali Shah said that 57 cases had been reported in Larkana, 23 in Sukkur, 22 in Khairpur, 19 in Kambar-Shahdadkot, 16 in Ghotki, 12 in Sanghar, 11 in Hyderabad, seven in Jacobabad, three each in Jamshoro, Shaheed Benazirabad and Shikarpur and one in Tando Allahyar. “We are tracing more contacts of the dead and the newly infected so that they could be tested as well,” he said.
Syed Murad Ali Shah said that 291 samples from Pir-jo-Goth were tested, out of which 47 had tested positive for the virus.
The chief minister urged the people of Sindh to be responsive to be SOPs and other guidelines being given to them by experts and WHO time to time, otherwise we would not be able to defeat the pandemic.