323 COVID-19 patients have died in Pakistan in self isolation over past 3 months

More than 300 COVID-19 patients have passed away in their homes during self-isolation over the past three months, said federal health authorities on Monday, according to The News. 

According to the authorities, of the 89 COVID-19 patients who died during 24 hours between June 21 and 22, at least six patients lost their lives at their homes, including four in Sindh and one each in Punjab and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

“So far, 3,590 people have lost their lives due to COVID-19 in Pakistan, of whom 323 or 9% died at homes. These were the people who were staying at homes after testing positive. A majority of them were either asymptomatic or with mild symptoms. When the authorities checked about their well-being on phone, their families reported them dead,” an official of the National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHSR&C) said.

The health authorities explained that of the 3,590 COVID-19 victims in Pakistan, 3,267 died at various hospitals. They added that despite all the problems, the case fatality rate (CFR) of COVID-19 in Pakistan has been 1.98% compared to 5.20% globally.

Among those patients who fell prey to viral disease at their homes, 182 belonged to Sindh, which is the highest number of deaths in home isolation. A total of 141 people died at home in the rest of the country, including Punjab, KP, Balochistan, Islamabad, Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir.

According to the authorities, of the 3,590 deaths in Pakistan due to the novel coronavirus, 2,589 were men who constituted 72% of the total deaths, which suggests that men are more prone to contract the disease compared to women as the mortality among the male COVID-19 patients is around three times higher compared to the female patients.

“At the same time, 72% of all the deceased had chronic comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, renal issues, asthma and other chronic medical illnesses,” an official said.

“Of the 89 people who died [of COVID-19] during the last 24 hours [between June 21 and 22], 83 died at hospitals, of whom 64 were on ventilators. Of them, 67% or 60 were men. Those who died in this period were between 30 and 92 years old and 66% of them had comorbidities or underlying health conditions,” the official added.

Healthcare providers

So far, 53 healthcare providers have lost their lives in the country, including 37 doctors, one medical student, two nurses and 10 paramedics while the details of the remaining three have been sought from Punjab, an official said. “We have lost two doctors during the last 24 hours, including one from District Sujawal in Sindh and the other from District Sahiwal in Punjab,” the official added.

Age and gender distribution

Officials said that men between 50 and 70 years with comorbidities were three times more likely to die due to COVID-19 in Pakistan as compared to women, adding that around 75% of the deaths occurred in the age group of 51 years and above in the country.

“Around 76%of the total confirmed cases are in the age group of up to 50 years but fortunately but only 25%of the 3,590 COVID-19 deaths occurred in this age group. We have 1,051 deaths in the age group of 51-60 years followed by 992 deaths in the age group of 61-70 years,” the official added.

Sharing the gender-wise data of deaths, the official said that a total of 2,589 men, 1,000 women and one transgender person had so far lost their lives due to the viral illness in Pakistan.

According to him, there had been only nine deaths among children up to 10 years of age, 31 among youngsters between 11 and 20 years of age, 97 among people of the 21-30 age group, 547 among people of the 41-50 age group, 1,051 among the age group of 51-60, 992 among the age group of 61-70, 492 among the age group of 71-80, 138 among people between 81 and 90 years and only 12 deaths were recorded among people above 91 years of age.

Most affected

Punjab is the most affected province of the country where 40% of the 3,590 deaths have occurred during the last three months, officials said, adding that Sindh recorded 30% of the deaths, followed by KP where 23% of the deaths occurred.

Hospitalization

The federal health authorities said that around 91% of the 3,590 deaths were reported from hospitals where the average hospital stay for COVID-19 patients was 4.9 days. They added that 1,773 hospitalised patients died on ventilators whose average stay on the life support was 2.8 days while the remaining 1,339 patients died ‘off vent’ at the hospitals.

Originally published in The News