ISLAMABAD: The number of coronavirus cases in Pakistan’s federal capital has significantly decreased in the wake of the smart lockdown in the city, Islamabad’s Deputy Commissioner Muhammad Hamza Shafqaat told Arab News on Friday.
“The number of virus infections reduced by 90 percent in the areas that were sealed last month,” he said. “Even now, the daily emergence of new cases is more than 300, but we have reduced it from 700 within a matter of days.”
Shafqaat added that smart lockdown would continue until the authorities managed to flatten the curve of the infectious respiratory disease in the federal capital.
Pakistan’s National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) recorded 136 deaths caused by the novel coronavirus on Friday as the number of confirmed cases in the country went beyond 165,000.
With about 10,000 COVID-19 patients, Islamabad’s administration reported 304 new cases in the last 24 hours.
“We are strictly enforcing the officially prescribed measures to prevent the spread of the virus,” he continued. “However, we have a small team and it is hard to fully implement the precautionary procedures without public cooperation and support.”
The deputy commissioner informed that the COVID-19 hotspots were identified in the city by geotagging the positive cases.
“After data analysis was performed at the NCOC, the neighborhoods with rising number of cases were completely sealed,” he said.
He continued that no one was allowed to enter or exit the locked down areas without reason, adding that unnecessary movement of people was discouraged to reduce the transmission of the deadly pathogen.
Shafqaat noted that the spread of the disease in the federal capital was maximum six percent per day which was less than the country’s average.
“Our testing ratio is the best in the country since we are testing 3,000 people every day. More than 100,000 people have so far been tested in Islamabad which is almost equal to the number of tests performed by the entire province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP). KP has also reported more than 20,000 positive cases while we have about 10,000 confirmed cases.”
Islamabad’s District Health Officer Dr. Muhammad Zaeem Zia said that smart lockdown relatively reduced the burden on health care system.
“COVID-19 was rapidly spreading in sectors G-9, I-8 and I-10, but smart lockdown helped us contain the problem to a great extent,” he told Arab News.
Zia added that COVID-19 teams were tirelessly working on sampling to identify hotspots and calculate results from areas under lockdown.
“The major purpose is to contain the spread of the coronavirus infection by stopping the movement of COVID-19 carriers,” Dr. Zia added.
The spokesperson of Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), Dr. Waseem Khawaja, endorsed the claim by saying: “The influx of COVID-19 patients in PIMS has reduced in the last couple of days due to the smart lockdown.”
He said that PIMS, Islamabad’s largest hospital, was working at full capacity due to the outbreak of the virus and intensive care units were fully occupied.
“The lockdown should continue since it will reduce the burden on our hospitals,” he added.
'Smart lockdown' helped reduce virus cases in Islamabad – officials
https://arab.news/48tdm
'Smart lockdown' helped reduce virus cases in Islamabad – officials
- The daily infection rate went down from 700 to a little over 300 within a matter of days, says the deputy commissioner
- Doctors maintain hospitals in the federal capital are still working at full capacity to serve COVID-19 patients
Pakistan’s Sindh announces judicial inquiry into deadly Karachi plaza fire
- Around 80 people were killed in Karachi Gul Plaza fire that broke out on Jan. 17, says Sindh information minister
- Says initial fact-finding committee discovered fire tenders were provided water with delay, which affected firefighting
ISLAMABAD: Sindh Information Minister Sharjeel Inam Memon announced on Thursday that the provincial government has requested a judicial inquiry into a deadly Karachi shopping plaza inferno that killed around 80 people earlier this month.
The fire broke out at Karachi’s famous Gul Plaza, a multi-story shopping complex in the city’s Saddar area, on the night of Jan. 17. The blaze killed 80 and took three days to extinguish, while rescue and relief efforts took over a week.
Speaking to reporters during a news conference, Memon said a Sindh cabinet sub-committee, chaired by Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, reviewed a fact-finding committee report on the Karachi Gul Plaza fire.
He said the fact-finding committee discovered that the Civil Defense department conducted fire safety audits of the mall and other buildings since 2023, but no effective, precautionary or legal action was taken to ensure such incidents were avoided. He said as a result, the Civil Defense director and the department’s additional controller for district South were both suspended.
“A letter is being written to the honorable chief justice of the Sindh High Court in which we are requesting the chief justice to appoint a serving judge for a judicial inquiry,” Memon said.
“So that we can review everything in accordance with the law himself and take decisions on it.”
Memon said that there were around 2,000 to 2,500 people in the building when the fire broke out, adding that these included workers and visitors.
He said the sub-committee had also noted that fire tenders were provided water with delay which affected the firefighting services of the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC), Rescue 1122 and fire brigades.
The minister said the government had also suspended the chief engineer and in-charge hydrants of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Corporation, and that action will be taken against them.
Memon said the committee had also concluded that the KMC, Rescue 1122 and fire brigades’ firefighting tools and training to deal with an inferno of such a scale were “inadequate.”
He said the government has also suspended the senior director of municipal services in the KMC and that departmental action against him will be taken for not ensuring that the fire staff was properly prepared to tackle such a blaze.
The minister said the sub-committee had directed the relevant department to carry out a needs assessment so that the firefighting capabilities of the provincial and local government are further strengthened.
Fires have become an increasingly frequent occurrence in Karachi, a megacity of more than 20 million people, where fire services remain severely overstretched and under-resourced relative to population density and the scale of commercial activity.
Successive deadly incidents have drawn criticism of the provincial Sindh administration over lax enforcement of building codes, inadequate inspections and limited emergency response capacity.
Sindh’s opposition parties, especially the Muttahida Quami Movement-Pakistan, accuse the Sindh government of neglecting Karachi’s infrastructural development. The provincial government rejects these allegations.
