An alarming spike in deaths of asymptomatic (showing no symptoms of the disease), physically healthy and isolated at home patients of COVID-19 has been witnessed in Sindh over the past 40 days.
60 COVID-19 patients, including 52 in Karachi, who were mostly isolate at their homes after doctors advice have been reported dead over the past few weeks, according to provincial authorities.
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The province has so far recorded 171 virus-related deaths, most of them in the metropolitan city. However, 60 of them, who were physically healthy and had no symptoms of the disease, collapsed suddenly inside their houses and died before they could be provided any medical treatment.
Sindh health department officials admitted that they have so far been unable to ascertain the causes and reasons behind the sudden deaths of these physically healthy COVID-19 patients.
“Until Thursday, there had been 171 COVID-19 deaths in the entire Sindh, of them 111 people had died at 13 different hospitals while the remaining 60 died at their home, without being able to get any medical treatment,” a health department official told The News on Thursday. “They include people as young as 40 and as old as 82,” he added.
Since February 26, at least 9,093 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Sindh, of which 5,858 were asked to isolate themselves at home, 683 were taken to different isolation centres in Karachi and other cities of the province, and 528 are under treatment at 13 health facilities.
“Of these 60 COVID-19 patients who died at home, 52 died in the six districts of Karachi while the remaining eight in Shaheed Benazirabad, Hyderabad and other parts of the province,” said the health official, adding that the first death in self-isolation was reported in the last week of March.
The statistics gathered by Sindh’s health authorities show that 15 COVID-19 patients have died at home in Karachi’s District Korangi, 10 in District Malir, 9 in District Central, 8 in District South and 5 each in the East and West districts.
At least 46 of the 60 COVID-19 patients who died in self-isolation were men, while 9 were women, one of them only 45 years old, said the officials, adding that majority of the patients who died at home after contracting the disease were in their 60s.
“This is quite an alarming situation. Our health officials stay in touch with COVID-19 patients who are in self-isolation through phone, and sometimes they are contacted on a daily basis about their health,” said the health department official.
“But for the past few weeks, two or three people are dying daily at home, even though they were otherwise healthy and completely fit the preceding day,” he added.
