RAWALPINDI: Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid has said that the strict implementation of coronavirus standard operating procedures (SOPs) yielded results with overall cases in the province going below 1,000 mark.
“We are in a very comfortable situation at the moment,” the provincial minister said while addressing a press conference in Rawalpindi today (Sunday). She said the number of COVID patients who were being discharged was now greater than the number of patients being admitted to hospitals.
The minister said for the first time, health authorities recorded less than 1,000 cases in the province after performing 28,973 tests in a day. “Today, the total cases reported are [914] compared to 4,000 per day, a month ago,” she added.
“You will start to realise that the number of cases has fallen because there was very strict implementation of SOPs and a complete lockdown in the last week of Ramazan,” the minister added.
The health minister further said the testing capacity of the province had also been increased after concerns were expressed that fewer cases might be reported due low testing numbers. ‘Wherever stricter SOPs have been enforced, the number of cases have reduced,” she stated.
Referring to oxygenated beds and ventilators currently in use in Punjab, the minister said out of 2,922 oxygenated beds in District Headquarters Hospitals (DHQs) in the province, only 502 were occupied while only 11 out of 111 ventilators were occupied.
“We have 2,818 oxygenated beds in teaching hospitals, of which 1,084 are vacant. As far as ventilators are concerned, 790 were dedicated for COVID-19 patients, of which 447 are vacant,” she pointed out.
Meanwhile, she said, more than 30pc of the 927 oxygenated beds are vacant and 130 vents out of 284 are lying vacant in Lahore. “At this time, the situation is much better than before,” she added.
Talking about the vaccination, the minister said that more than 2.8 million people in the province had been vaccinated against the coronavirus so far and Punjab was ahead of all other provinces in this regard.
“Four big vaccination centres are operating in Rawalpindi currently while six more would be added next week,” she said, adding that vaccination facilities were available for frontline health workers at all teaching hospitals.
Giving the latest update, Rashid said 37pc of people aged above 70, 46pc of people over 60, 37pc of people over 50, 19pc of people over 40 and 5pc of people over 30 had been vaccinated.
“I am saying again, the people most vulnerable to the virus are those above 50 and we have to vaccinate 100pc of them,” she said, urging people to encourage the elderly in their families to get vaccinated.
The provincial minister also urged the people of Pakistan to follow precautionary measures, saying, “We have to live with the pandemic for a while. It has not gone anywhere.”
“There are two important steps people could take to protect themselves — physical precautions such as wearing masks, maintaining social distancing and not leaving homes unnecessarily — and getting vaccinated”, she concluded .
