Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said on Saturday that 1,080 cases of the coronavirus were detected in the province.
In his video message released from the Chief Minister's House on Saturday, Murad said this was the highest one-day figure of the positive cases in any province since the beginning of the pandemic.
The worst-hit area in the province was Pir-jo-Goth of Khairpur district where 246 new cases were diagnosed in a day, Murad said. The chief minister said that 1080 cases emerged when 5498 tests were conducted.
"This seems to be the peak, and it may rise further with the increasing number of tests," he said and added that the testing capacity was being enhanced to 6,450 tests a day.
Shah said that the Sindh government had conducted 87,108 tests overall against which 10,771 cases were diagnosed which constituted 12.4 percent of the total tests.
He said that four more patients lost their lives, and now the death toll has reached 180 which was 1.7 percent of the total number of patients.
The chief minister said that 8,571 patients were under treatment. "I am sorry to say that 101 patients or 17.2 percent of the total patients are in critical condition, 23 of them on ventilators," he said.
Shah said that some random testing was conducted at some grocery and vegetable shops where shopkeepers and their customers were found positive.
"This is a dangerous sign. This is why I have been requesting people not to go out of home unnecessarily, and even it is necessary people must wear masks and follow the SOP," he said.
The chief minister said that local spread had hit various districts, Khairpur's taluka Pir-jo-Goth being the worst.
He said that a woman from Pir-jo-Goth had gone to Hyderabad, and when she returned home she fell ill and died within two days.
"I think she was coronavirus positive. Since she was not tested, she was not being counted among the coronavirus patients," he said and added he had been suspecting she brought the virus back to Pir-jo-Goth from Hyderabad and infected others in the village.
Her Namaz-e-Janaza was offered without observing the SOPs, he said and added that the government had been testing all those who had attended her funeral. Giving details of the samples tested so far, Shah said that on 4 May, 35 people [of Pir-jo-Goth] were tested, and 10 were diagnosed as positive. On 6 May, 97 villagers were tested, and 14 were found positive. On 7 May, 59 more people were tested and seven came positive, and finally 251 were tested on May 8 and 246 were positive. "This is a very serious situation, and the cases in Pir-jo-Goth are multiplying," he said.
Shah directed the district administration of Khairpur to impose strict lockdown in Pir-jo-Goth and isolate the patients in their homes or shift them to the isolation center in Sukkur.
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