Health dept decides to broaden Covid-19 surveillance by increasing tests.

PESHAWAR -- The health department has decided to broaden surveillance by increasing tests to get clear picture about the Covid-19 positivity and initiate steps accordingly.

'Presently, Covid-19 infectivity level is only 0.8 per cent in the province. It is very low but we are doing only 2,000 PCRs per day which cannot reflect the true scenario about the scale of the infection,' a senior health official told Dawn.

The department has directed all the districts to expedite testing of the suspected people and contacts of the positive patients and increase the number of tests to at least 7,500 per day. The province recorded 29 confirmed cases on Tuesday, making the total infections 219,975 of whom 213,413 patients including 12 recorded during the last 24 hours have recovered from the infectious ailment, according to a report of health department.

The report said that Peshawar recorded 18 infections, Mardan eight and Abbottabad two. A total of 2,154 tests were conducted in the province.

Official says infectivity level of virus in KP 0.8pc only

Officials said that health department started regular meetings to discuss Covid-19 situation and decided to enhance testing to know the real number of infections in the province. 'We fear that the pandemic might return with more veracity as people have already stopped wearing masks and following other standard operating procedures. In this situation increasing testing is the only method to detect positive cases and take measures accordingly,' they added.

They said that bed occupancy in the hospitals of Khyber Pakhtunwa was only 27 per cent. 'It is only one per cent of the total 2,700 beds allocated for coronavirus patients in different hospitals of the province. Only two patients are in intensive care unit and one is on ventilator. It shows that the situation is under control,' they added.

However, officials said that they needed to record zero...