COVID-19: Karachi's positivity ratio crosses 40%

• Two major health facilities report record number of patients' admission in Karachi.
• Karachi reports 2,902 new infections.
• Seven other cities report positivity ratio higher than 10%, officials say.

KARACHI: With the incessant rise in the COVID-19 infections in Karachi owing to the Omicron variant outbreak, the coronavirus positivity ratio of the megacity crossed 40%, the federal health ministry officials said Wednesday.

According to the officials, as many as 2,902 new infections were detected overnight in Karachi when 7,232 diagnostic tests were performed.

The new infections pushed the city's positivity rate to 40.13% - highest since the pandemic begin.

Apart from Karachi, seven more cities in the country reported a positivity ratio higher than 10%, the officials added.

As per the statistics, Muzaffarabad's positivity rate stood at 21%,  followed by Lahore with 15.15%, Hyderabad 14%, Islamabad 12%, Peshawar 11% and Rawalpindi at 10.26%.

Hospitalisations on the rise in Karachi

Moreover, a sudden rise in the hospitalisations of coronavirus patients set the alarm bells ringing in Karachi when two major health facilities of the city reported a record number of patients' admission, The News reported.

Patients having difficulty in breathing and other issues related to coronavirus are being hospitalised in large numbers, the report said.

As of Tuesday, there were 82 patients admitted at Sindh Infectious Disease Hospital at NIPA Karachi, of which 32 were in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) and seven on ventilators. The officials said among these patients, two were children under the age of 16.

Besides, officials at the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH) said they had over 50 patients in their Covid-19 treatment facility and said they were adding more beds as the number of infected patients was rising every hour.

Other hospitals said they too were witnessing a surge in hospitalisations of patients having symptoms of the infectious disease.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 claimed six more lives in Sindh during the last 24 hours. Most of the deaths were reported from Karachi.

“As many as six more people have lost their lives due to complications of COVID-19 overnight in Sindh, mostly in Karachi”, Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said in his daily report on Tuesday.

Shah said that the death toll due to COVID-19 had reached 7,709 in the province and added that 17,911 samples were tested, which detected 3,283 cases that constituted 18.3% current detection rate. 

He further said so far 7,385,949 tests have been conducted against which 507,476 cases were diagnosed, of them 93.2% or 472,739 patients have recovered, including 215 overnight.

Shah maintained that currently 27,028 patients were under treatment, of them 26,662 were in home isolation, 25 at isolation centers and 341 at different hospitals and added that the condition of 297 patients was stated to be critical, including 23 on ventilators.