Covid-19 positivity ratio climbs to 31pc in Karachi

KARACHI: The COVID-19 positivity ratio in Karachi reached up to 31 percent on Thursday when 1,940 people were tested positive for the infectious disease, an official report revealed as two more people died in the city.

“As many as 1,940 people have been tested positive for COVID-19 in Karachi when 6,259 tests were conducted in the city, which means that around 31 percent people were tested positive for the infectious disease in the city,” an official of the Sindh Health Department said while quoting the daily situation report of COVID-19 of January 13, 2022.

The official, however, claimed that as the hospitalisation was not increasing in Karachi, no drastic measures were under consideration to control the spread of COVID-19 due to the Omicron Variant, which has replaced the Delta Variant almost completely.

“We have decided that unless the hospitalisation increases up to 40-50 percent in Karachi, we are not going to take any drastic measures. We are taking some measures to promote vaccination and take action against businesses doing public dealing with unvaccinated staff but no stringent measures are under consideration at the moment in Karachi,” MPA Qasim Soomro, Parliamentary Secretary Health in the Sindh Assembly, told The News on Thursday.

Claiming that most of the health facilities for Covid-19 patients were lying almost vacant, MPA Qasim Soomro said on Thursday the Sindh health minister held a detailed meeting with the NCOC officials and it was decided that the country could not afford measures like lockdown and people should be asked to take precautionary measures to save themselves.

On the other hand, the Sindh chief minister, in his daily COVID-19 situation report, said two more patients of COVID-19 died overnight in Sindh, raising the death toll to 7,693 while 2,289 new cases emerged when 12,229 tests were conducted in the province.

Murad said that 12,229 samples were tested, which detected 2,289 cases that constituted 18.7 percent current detection rate and added that so far 7,307,649 tests have been conducted against which 492,574 cases were diagnosed, of them 95.3 percent or 469,506 patients have recovered, including 153 overnight.