KARACHI: The UK variant of COVID-19, which is spreading in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, makes patients unwell faster, health authorities and doctors treating COVID-19 patients in the province said on Saturday, and called for a two-week lockdown to stem the spread of the disease.

The COVID-19 detection ratio in Karachi, the provincial capital and Pakistan’s most populous city, was previously recorded at four percent and Hyderabad at five percent. In a single month, those figures have increased to 8.93 percent in Karachi and 16.64 percent in Hyderabad, the Sindh government revealed last week.

Pakistan reported its highest daily death toll on Saturday, as the government mulls imposing tighter restrictions and lockdowns. On Sunday, an interior ministry notification said the army was being called in to enforce COVID-19 SOP’s in all provinces except for Sindh.

Doctors in the southern province have said the new variant leads to the development of early pneumonia and patients require more immediate oxygen support.

“A coronavirus patient would take four to seven days to develop pneumonia. But now, not only is there early pneumonia, but the patient immediately needs oxygen support,” Dr Omar Sultan, a consultant physician in Jinnah Hospital, Sindh’s largest health facility, told Arab News. Dr. Sultan has treated hundreds of patients since the outbreak of the pandemic last year.

In Sindh, of the high-flow capacity in High Dependency Units of hospitals, 327 patients are currently receiving oxygen and of them, 266 are COVID-19 patients. Intensive Care Units (ICU) across Sindh have a capacity of 761, of which nearly a fourth are occupied by COVID-19 patients.

The province has 531 beds with ventilators and of these only 52 are occupied.

Doctors predict the situation will change for the worse in the coming days as people continue to ignore coronavirus related SOPs and the federal government resists a lockdown. 

“No one is willing to follow SOPs. Even some markets in Karachi are open today... on Sunday,” Dr Qaiser Sajjad, general secretary of the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) told Arab News, adding that to avoid an India-like situation, with cases sharply raising in Karachi and Hyderabad, an immediate lockdown was the only way to stop the spread.

“Large numbers of doctors and paramedics are still deprived of vaccines, especially in Sindh, where the infection rate in doctors is much higher than in other provinces,” the PMA General Secretary added. 

“There is a complete unwillingness on the part of people [to comply], whereas the authorities are also not implementing health guidelines,” Dr. Sultan said.

“If the virus further spreads, it will be out of control like we saw in India,” he continued and asked authorities to go for an immediate two-week lockdown to save the health system from collapsing. 

Earlier, Pakistan’s federal minister for information, Fawad Hussain Chaudhry, told reporters that almost 90 percent oxygen in the country was in use and even if imported, no more oxygen could be channelized into the system.

“The numbers are on the rise and the hospitals are getting full,” Dr Faisal Mahmood, an associate professor of infectious diseases at the Aga Khan University, Karachi, told Arab News. 

In a video message released earlier this week, provincial health chief in Sindh, Dr. Azra Pechuho, said that a genomic study conducted in the provincial capital, Karachi had 50 samples confirming the UK variant of the virus. 

“This virus has reached Karachi now too,” she warned. 

Authorities in the province accuse the federal government of not taking stricter measures to control the virus spread.  

Speaking to Arab News, Murtaza Wahab, spokesperson of the Sindh government said people were not taking the virus seriously. 

“When the prime minister says the Ramadan economy is important, how will people take the virus seriously,” he asked and admitted that neither mosques nor markets were following health guidelines. 

“We urge the people to follow SOPs in this very alarming situation. But if they are unwilling to do so,” he warned: “We will have to take strict measures,”