ANALYSIS: Number of coronavirus cases in Tharparkar negligible.

Byline: Mohammad Hussain Khan

HYDERABAD -- While Sindh's trajectory of Covid-19 cases keeps showing an inclining trend, the desert district of Tharparkar has, luckily, come up with negligible number of coronavirus cases. Similar pattern is seen in Thar's neighbouring district of Umerkot which according to health department's chart also has active cases in single digit.

Mirpurkhas and Badin districts - also connected with Thar - have reported two deaths each.

Tharparkar for the past few years has been in the limelight for all the wrong reasons - deaths of malnourished newborns, prolonged drought and suicides. But at least in this pandemic that has been wreaking havoc in the world with thousands of deaths in the developed countries, Thar has reported zero Covid-19 deaths.

Scattered population in Tharparkar - stretching over 19,638sq km - seems to be a major factor to have stemmed the spread of contagion. Parts of Umerkot fall in the desert, too. Badin and Mirpurkhas districts have shared one death each. Ten positive cases are reported in Tharparkar, 26 in Mirpurkhas, eight in Umerkot and 25 in Badin. Tharparkar has two active patients, Umerkot four, Mirpurkhas seven, and Badin nine. Both patients are in home isolation in Tharparkar.

Thar's population dynamics, including its density (1.649m as per provisional 2017 census results), distances between villages etc, 'by default' offer social distancing model, something being advised by health experts. The district, now home to coal production, is yet to see larger urbanised centres that otherwise bristle with activities in cities like Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Larkana and thus higher number of cases there and mortality.

Also, the lockdown was effective there. It stopped mobility of desert's dwellers considerably, otherwise they travel amidst cramped conditions from area to area in not-so-fit vehicles in the absence of public sector transport system. The area has seen somewhat better road network in the past few years.

'Thar's population is scattered and it helped contain spread of the infection or kept local transmission limited to a greater degree,' said a doctor who is part of Sindh government's Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Programme (FELTP) in Karachi.

One of the present two active Covid-19 patients in Thar is a house job officer of Liaquat University Hospital (LUH) and was said to have been infected in the LUH with other colleagues. His father was believed to have contracted...