KP records highest virus recovery rate.

PESHAWAR -- Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Minister Taimur Salim Khan Jhagra has said that the province has recorded the highest recovery rate of patients infected with Covid-19 as compared to all the other provinces and Islamabad capital territory as 31 per cent infected people have healed, showing the success of hospitals.

Citing a report of National Emergency Centre Islamabad, he told a news conference on Wednesday that Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was ahead in terms of cure rate of the Covid-19 patients than Punjab's 30 per cent, Sindh's 267 per cent, Balochistan's 21 per cent and Islamabad's 13 per cent. He said that it was testimony to their best healthcare system.

'Our healthcare providers need appreciation for their professionalism and hard work in these times. We are making all-out efforts to enable them to further improve cure rate,' said the minister.

He described the enforcement of lockdown a blessing as it allowed the government to scale up its preparedness level to combat the pandemic more effectively. 'We have enhanced facilities for Covid-19 patients. Currently, the province has 200 isolation and 359 quarantine centres and 5,598 beds have been exclusively allocated for Covid-19 patients,' he added.

Mr Jhgra said that hospitals in the province had more than 550 ventilators to manage the critically-ill patients requiring mechanical breathing. 'We have also supplied over 1.4 million masks to hospitals to ensure safety of our healthcare workers besides increasing our testing capacity for Covid-19 patients from only 40 per day on March to 2,160 per day on May 18,' he added.

Minister says it is testimony to best healthcare system

There are 11 laboratories including four private that are conducting the tests, with bulk of the diagnosis coming from the public sector labs. The province has also been ahead of other provinces as far as tests conducted in public laboratories are concerned.

The minister said that government...