COVID-19: Lahore to go into weekend lockdown as cases rise in Pakistan

Islamabad: Given the worsening situation of COVID-19 in the country, particularly in Punjab, the district administration of Lahore has decided to impose a complete lockdown in the city during the weekend — on Saturday and Sunday — banning all types of inter-provincial public transport during these two days.

In a tweet on Friday, Commissioner Lahore Division Muhammad Usman requested the public to support the district administration in tough decisions.

Not only public transport but businesses and markets across the city will also remain closed, it has been further decided.

However the commissioner clarified medical stores, petrol pumps and vaccination centres will remain open during the weekend.

The Punjab cabinet a day earlier had recommended complete lockdown in Lahore and other cities of the province before Eid-al-Fitr.

According to the Punjab’s Primary & Secondary Health Department, the province in the last twenty-four hours reported 2,296 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and out of that number Lahore alone reported 1,085 cases.

Oxygen production

Compared with last year, Pakistan’s oxygen production capacity has improved and according to Minister for Planning, Development & Special Initiative Asad Umar, the country’s operational capacity for oxygen production has increased to 798 tons per day from last year’s 487 tons daily production.

Asad Umar further said that 19,200 oxygen cylinders were also imported last year to ensure oxygen’s timely distribution.

According to the minister, the total number of COVID-19 critical care patients on oxygen had reached 5,360 yesterday (Thursday). This is 57 per cent more than the peak last June, he further said in his tweet.

We have so far managed to cope with this huge increase because of proactively building capacity of the entire system from oxygen production to beds, he further said.

Asad Umar in another tweet announced that Pakistan had recorded the second successive day of more than 1 lakh (100,000) doses vaccine administered countrywide.

It is encouraging to see pace of registration also picking up and vaccination of those between 40 and 49 years age is starting from next Monday the 3rd of May.

Brazilian, African variantsMinister for Health Sindh Dr Azra Fazal Pichoho in a video message has cautioned the Sindh public against a number of COVID-19 variants detected in the province. They include South African & Brazilian and UK variants.

We studied 13 samples of COVID-19 at Aga Khan University Hospital. Out of those 13, 10 are the UK variants and two are South African and Brazilian, she said.

The UK variant, she said, spreads fast with 60-68 per cent positivity rate. Similarly, the Brazilian and the South African variants are not responsive to COVID-19 vaccine and spread very fast, she cautioned the public advising them to avoid socializing.

Sindh’s Parliamentary Secretary for Health Qasim Soomro also warned the public against the new variants of COVID-19 in a tweet.

AKU did a random sampling of 13 COVID-19 patients for genomic study, according to which 10 are UK, 01 is South African and 01 is Brazilian variant. “This is frightening percentage in a small sampling, indicating a wide community spread of these highly infectious variants,” said Soomro in his tweet.

Pakistan reported on Friday 131 deaths caused by COVID-19 in the last 24 hours taking the overall death toll to 17,811 in the country.

According to the data shared by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), 5,112 new cases of COVID-19 were reported in the past one day with which the tally of cases had surged to 820,823.

According to the NCOC, the number of active cases in the country had reached 91,547 while the positivity rate stood at 10.41 per cent.