Zubair Qureshi
The administration of the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) is all set to carry out initial preparations and survey for a full-scale lockdown of the Sectors G-8 and G-7 as well as Ghouri Town in view of high number of coronavirus cases from these two sectors and Ghouri Town.
In past couple of days 60pc of new cases have been reported from these two sectors and Ghouri Town while the ration of cases has dropped in sectors that are locked down.
While talking to Pakistan Observer, a senior official of the ICTA requesting to keep him unnamed said on Sunday a decision in this regard has been taken and police as well as health department teams are directed to take all the necessary measures like survey of the streets, shopping centres as well as residential areas and businesses and government offices there.
Lockdown of various sub-sectors of G-9, I-8 and I-10 has yielded positive results like slowdown/reduction of Covid-19 cases there, the official said adding and seeing public indifference to repeated warnings of SOPs violation as well as little regard for social distancing, the district administration is left with little choice but to enforce lockdown.
Deputy Commissioner Islamabad Mohammad Hamza Shafqaat when contacted to confirm the news, however, denied any such decision has been made.
Presently, we are confronting the virus and tracing the cases and their contacts in G-9, I-8 and I-9 sectors and seeing the positive results of the lockdown we have extended lockdown there for three more days. We have not held any meeting regarding lockdown of Sectors G-7 or G-8 and Ghouri Town, said Hamza Shafqaat however, adding a meeting to specifically decide about these three areas is scheduled for Thursday and we would take final decision in that meeting, he said.
Islamabad meanwhile reported 10,662 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 98 deaths—385 cases and three deaths in last 24 hours. Deputy Commissioner Shafqaat said out of the 10,000 positive cases reported in Islamabad’s various areas almost half were recovering and the health teams of the District Health Office were actively pursuing their contacts and interviewing them to ascertain if they were a positive case of Covid-19 or not.
