KARACHI: Sindh’s overall COVID-19 infection tally surpassed 40,000, with overall 696 deaths, on June 9 when the authorities confirmed detection of another 1,748 new cases across the province with a daily positivity rate at 25%.

The Sindh Chief Minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, delivering his routine COVID-19 status report, informed that the infection rate was very high and situation was getting bad to worse due to disrespect to the preventive measures.

“People should help government save the lives of citizens by following the standard operating procedures,” he added saying that as many as 446 coronavirus patients were still in critical condition.

In a video message, the Sindh Health Minister, Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho, announced that the provincial government will establish additional five hospitals in Karachi to overcome the COVID-19 situation.

“We will have 800 new beds in various high dependency high dependency units by the end of July, she added and informed that makeshift COVID-19 setting at the Karachi Expo Centre will get a 140-bed high dependency facility by the end of June,” she said.

In the meantime, according to an official report, in all 21 hospitals in Karachi were having 57 ICU beds, 250 HDU beds vacant, in addition to 96 unoccupied 96 isolation units, as of June 9, at 11 am. These hospitals had 160 COVID-19 patients in the ICUs and 252 in HDUs, while another 170 patients in the isolation units.

As on June 8, among the hospitals, Civil Hospital Karachi was bearing the maximum load of 166 patients, followed by Dow Universality Hospital (120), Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (108), PNS Shifa Hospital (84) Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (79), Aga Khan University Hospital (78) and other hospitals.

On the other hand, 444 COVID-19 patients were under treatment in the Karachi Central Prison, while another 60 were receiving treatments in the government-run field isolation centre.

According to Sindh health department data, updated on June 9, Sindh’s overall tally of infection stood at 41,303, including 1,748 new cases detected during the last 24 hours ending at 9 am on June 8, with 17 new deaths including 12 fatalities in Karachi.

It was reported that six males in the age brackets of 52 to 65 years and six women aged from 54 to 72 years died at Karachi. However, there was no information from the government about the places of deaths of the victims.

In addition, two deaths, a 48-year-old man and a woman of 65 years, were reported from Kambar Shahdadkot while Larkana and Hyderabad reported death of one man each. The two deceased were aged 65 and 53 years.  The government also confirmed death of a 43-year-old man, among the ‘out of province residents.’

As per the department’s summary, Karachi reported a total 1,408 new cases on June 9, followed by Sukkur (102 new cases), Hyderabad (47), Ghotki (24), Badin (18), Shaheed Benazirabad (17), Jacobabad (16), Khairpur (15), Shikarpur (15), Jamshoro (14), Kashmore (9), Sujawal (6), Umerkot (6), Naushehro Feroze (4), Thatta (2), Tando Mohammad Khan (2), Tando Allahyar (2), Mirpurkhas (2) and Sanghar (1).

Meanwhile as many as 19,896 patients have recovered from the disease, 20,711 were still receiving treatments at homes (19,246), hospitals (1,461) and isolation centres (41). Sindh has tested 264,517 samples so far–PNFS