By Mukhtar Alam:

The health authorities in Sindh, who have been confirming new corona infection cases in considerable size across the province every day, did not expose any new case on April 4.

The federal health ministry website, which updates the province wise data of coronavirus cases in routine, also did not show any change in Sindh data. The total number of coronavirus infected people in Sindh remained unchanged at 839 as of April 3.

People were somewhat relieved to see no increase in infections but the manner in which the Sindh health authorities kept silent on the subject generated concerns among them. They were failing to grasp that Sindh has been able to flatten the infection curve.

Despite various attempts made by journalists, the provincial data set up of the government neither issued the routine fact sheet of COVID-19 disease nor gave any reason behind the suppression of the due communication that normally contained a number of new infections, district wise numbers of infected people and number of deaths, if any.

Around 7.30 pm, the adviser to Chief Minister Sindh, Murtaza Wahab, in a tweet message, just shared that another 12 patients have recovered from the diseases, as their corona test had come negative, taking the tally of people getting treatment and recovered to 86 in the province.

The overall rate of Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Sindh ranged from 9 to 10.5% during the week. An all-day maximum was witnessed on March 30 (119) new infection, which was down to 49 on March 31, 67 on April 1, 42 on April 2, 56 on April 3 and zero on April 4.

Sindh has recorded 14 corona related deaths so far. Keen observers, however, relate the decrease in new infections to two factors. Either the government has been unable to increase the number of tests involving the general population or its panel of experts projected the disease unfittingly.

Different government designated corona testing centers were commutatively conducting 600-700 tests daily, against the capacity of conducting 1,200 tests, a provincial minister was quoted as saying recently.

A public sector corona testing facility reported that it found 9-10 percent of the samples positive, while another such institution said that till April 3 it screened about 3,600 patients, out of which 25 tested positive for coronavirus.

Another minister on April 4 disclosed that Sindh which conducted on average 80 corona tests per day in February was now having the capacity of conducting about 2,240 tests every, which would be increased up to 5,000 soon, while about 200,000 test kits were being imported from abroad.