Daily Times

The Covid-19 positivity ratio in the metropolis witnessed a decrease and reached 9% on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Sindh government has closed the Expo Centre’s mass vaccination facility for COVID-19 in the city as people are not visiting to get themselves vaccinated anymore.

According to the health department, the positivity rate of the virus has been recorded at 9.21%. Around 2,607 coronavirus tests were carried out in the last 24 hours, out of which 240 turned out to be positive.

The government has also closed the intensive care units (ICUs) and high dependency care units (HDUs) in various public healthcare facilities due to the decreased number of COVID-related hospitalisations.

According to the administration, door-to-door vaccination has started as people have stopped going to designated centres to get themselves inoculated.

On June 25, the coronavirus infection rate in the port city neared 20% after more than 200 fresh cases were reported a day earlier. The positivity ratio had reached 19.65% after the city registered 246 new coronavirus cases.

Amid an alarming rise in the coronavirus positivity rate across Sindh, especially in Karachi, the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) and the provincial health department agreed on Tuesday to increase testing to curb the infections.

The meeting between the health department and the NCOC came after the latter was directed by Health Minister Qadir Patel to approach the former and formulate a strategy to contain the virus. “It was discussed to increase testing, contact tracing and implementation of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions (NPIs), especially mask wearing at all crowded places, and [during] domestic travel by air, railways or road,” a statement by the National Institute of Health (NIH) said.

Last week, the Sindh government revived non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPI) guidelines for Karachi to mitigate the “alarming” rise of Covid-19 infections. As per the directives issued by director general health services Sindh, the new NPIs included the wearing of masks, social distancing at public gatherings, and the reduction of passenger occupancy in public transport to 70 per cent.

Furthermore, checking of vaccination cards at high-risk areas such as shopping malls, shrines and gyms were also reinstated. According to the circular issued, wedding ceremonies would be limited to 300 people for indoor events and 500 persons for outdoor events. The sub-variants of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 are accounting for most of the new cases. A member of the Scientific Task Force on Covid-19 explained that the immunity level among people was decreasing and the efficacy of vaccines, which was once 95%, had fallen to around 80-85% as the virus was continuously mutating. He added that vaccines were losing their efficacy even though they were the only protection against Covid-19.