Islamabad: Six COVID-19 patients, two children and four elderly, died in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s (KP) second biggest hospital Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) in Peshawar for failure of the hospital to timely supply oxygen to them.
According to the hospital’s spokesperson five patients were admitted to the hospital’s coronavirus ward while one was in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
KP Health Minister Taimur Khan Jhagra after the report went viral on media has directed the hospital’s Board of Governors (BoG) to conduct an inquiry into the incident and take action within 48 hours.
Jhagra warned if the inquiry conducted by the hospital’s BoG was not found to be satisfactory, the provincial government would order its own independent inquiry.
In a tweet, the minister said that all facts of the sad incident would be made public. This is unacceptable, he said however, he requested people to refrain from sharing unverified information on social media.
“Neither this nor any other incident will be left unused, to improve the health system, its service, and its system of accountability and transparency,” Jhagra said.
A sad incident
Meanwhile, Adviser to the KP Chief Minister on Information Kamran Bangash termed the incident “saddening” and said that the provincial government was committed to making the inquiry report of the incident public within 48 hours.
He added that that action would be taken against those found responsible.
The hospital receives its oxygen supply from Rawalpindi which did not reach on time, leading to the death of the critically ill patients, he said.
The hospital spokesperson meanwhile, said as temperature was lowering and the cases were increasing, the hospital required more oxygen.
After the incident, Lady Reading Hospital (LRH) provided oxygen cylinders to KTH and beds for the patients.
The provincial health department had provided 100 cylinders to KTH recently which helped to prevent further worsening of the crisis, he said.
Pakistan on Sunday witnessed another day of more than 3,000 cases of COVID-19 in a period of twenty-four hours with 58 deaths in the same period.
Active cases
According to the Ministry of National Health Services’ portal the number of active cases has gone beyond 53,000 which is a disturbing figure and the positivity rate has also increased to around 15 per cent.
With these latest statistics Pakistan’s total number of infections stands at 416,500 while the death toll has stopped at 8,361. Pakistan conducted more than 41,000 tests during the last twenty-four hours while the number of recoveries during the same period has been reported at 2,483.
In KP the virus situation has been described the worst on Sunday e as the province reported 537 new cases in one day, the highest single-day count since the second wave of COVID-19. The province’s infections are close to 50,000 with these new cases while five deaths in the last 24 hours has taken the death toll to 1,404.