PESHAWAR: The government is concerned about increase in ratio of Covid-19 infection in Peshawar division and is scaling up vaccination in Mohmand and Khyber districts to cope with the latest wave of the pandemic.

       As Peshawar’s tally of mortalities due to Covid-19 swelled to 2,255 with eight deaths on Sunday, Divisional Commissioner Riaz Khan Mehsud said that they focused on the capital city where the virus was endemic.

       “We have been vaccinating double of the 11,000 target per day for the past 10 days. Situation with regard to inoculation is not up to a desired level in Khyber and Mohmand because we are administering dose to 2,200 people against the target of 3,000 in both the districts. In Peshawar, we have already closed down marriage halls, restaurants and shops and cases lodged against them for violating the Covid-10 precautions,” he told this scribe.

       Special teams have been assigned the tasks and they remained in the field for 24 hours to check the business centres, bus stands and other public places and maintain the level of Covid-19 precautions to stem tide of infection in Peshawar division.

       Covid-19 claims eight more lives in KP

       He said that positivity level in Peshawar came down to 14 per cent from 16 during the past one week that showed that the steps were giving results. “Under the direction of National Command and Operation Centre and on the recommendation of health department, we enforce smart lockdowns in the areas which record cases. Currently, six areas are facing smart lockdowns,” he added.

       Meanwhile, a health department report said that the provincial list of fatalities from Covid-19 reached 4,668 and the number of cases was 152,625 while 141,041 of them including 291 recorded during the last 24 hours had recovered from the infection.

       The province has 6916 active cases with 80 per cent of them in Peshawar division. The provincial capital has 2196 active cases, Nowshera 324, Charsadda 53 and Khyber has 27 cases of the virus.

       Mr Mehsud said that people were in a state of fatigue to fully observe precautions and the administration was in the process to prevail upon them to stay at home and avoid coming out unnecessarily. He added it helped them to enforce SOPs and increase vaccination.

       “We are facing issues in Khyber and Mohmand districts, which have recorded 2,303 cases and 12 mortalities since the advent of the coronavirus. We need to enhance vaccination and ensure safety of the people there. We have to immunise 3,000 persons but we are planning to double the number of vaccinated people,” he said.

       The official said that shops would be allowed to stay open on Sunday as opposed to the schedule under which they remained closed for two days a week.

       However, after two holidays during Ashura, the markets would remain closed on Wednesday and Thursday and then they would have to keep shutter down on Saturday, he added.

       He said that there was no dearth of vaccines and all the people were getting jabs as per their schedule but the process of immunisation was being enhanced to ensure public safety in view of the fourth wave of the virus, which was more dangerous than the previous ones.

       “Without vaccination against the virus, we cannot get back to normal lives. The people must adopt protective steps including vaccination and adherence to SOPs to pave way for the safety against the disease,” he said.

       Published in Dawn, August 16th, 2021