More beds and wards reserved at hospitals for virus patients

ISLAMABAD: Health authorities have started reserving more beds, wards and human resources at two major tertiary-care hospitals in Karachi to deal with the growing number of COVID-19 cases, as the positivity rate due to the highly transmissible Delta variant, which accounts for 92 per cent of the infection cases in the metropolis, has jumped to 23.32 per cent.

“A surgical ward comprising 48 beds is being converted into a COVID-19 ward at the Civil Hospital Karachi, while the pulmonology ward at the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre has also been put on standby to deal with the rising cases due to the Delta variant, which is now spreading like wildfire in the city,” a Sindh Health Department official said.

He said that all the elective surgeries have been cancelled at the CHK to prevent the health care staff from contracting the viral infection, while other elective surgeries and procedures at other medical facilities have also been halted, except for emergencies, adding that Karachi is heading towards “a serious medical crisis.”

Claiming that hospitalisation has increased four times from 390 patients in April to around 1,000 in mid-july, the official said that some COVID-19 treatment facilities, including the Infectious Diseases Hospital at Nipa and the Expo Centre, are already overwhelmed with patients, while other tertiary-care health facilities are also under tremendous pressure.

In the meantime, with over 15,000 more cases of coronavirus being reported over the past one week, Pakistan has been ranked 30th among the countries having detected the most number of cases since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic according to global ranking.

So far, the country has reported a litle less than a million cases (i.e. 989,275) including 22,781 deaths, while India has reported the second highest number of cases (over 31 million) ater the US where over 34m cases have been detected. While observing that the COVID-19 situation is worsening in Pakistan with a resurgence in cases, the Pakistan Medical Association in a statement noted that the worst of all was the presence of Delta variant in a number of cases and once again requested the masses to follow coronavirus-related SOPS.