KARACHI: The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) on Saturday announced to lift lockdown imposed in the Sindh province from August 9.
According to the NCOC, new restrictions on movement in Karachi and Hyderabad will be enforced from August 9.
The NCOC, which devises a national strategy to deal with the pandemic, said that the implementation of Covid-19 SOPs should be improved at the beginning of Muharram, besides emphasising the need to adopt a smart lockdown strategy.
“Smart lockdown should be imposed in areas witnessing higher positivity ratio,” it said and lauded the Sindh government’s measures that helped improve the vaccination process.
The Sindh government had announced to impose lockdown in the province from July 31
until August 8, citing increase in Covid-19 cases.
Earlier in the day, a session of the NCOC was briefed that the fourth wave of Covid-19 has entered its sixth week in the country and losing some of its steam.
The session of the NCOC was held at the CM House in Karachi, in which Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, Federal Minister Asad Umar, Lt. Gen. Hamood-uz-Zaman, Special Assistant to Prime Minister Khalid Mansoor and some other officials participated.
“The pandemic is raging in Azad Jammu and Kashmir as the Covid-19 positivity ratio has soared to 26 percent,” the session was informed in the briefing.
“Test positivity rate in Sindh is 13 percent. In Karachi, positivity rate is 21 percent, which has been dropped by 3 percent from the previous positivity rate,” the meeting was told.
However, the hike in coronavirus cases in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is slower, according to the briefing.
The meeting was informed that 67 percent cases in Karachi are coming from Islamabad, Lahore, Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Hyderabad.
“Daily 500 patients are adding to the total number of infections in the country. The Delta variant wave has been more intensive in Karachi. The Sindh government has taken stringent measures to counter the virus disease,” the NCOC session was briefed.