PESHAWAR: The health department has decided to broaden surveillance by increasing tests to get clear picture about the Covid-19 positivity and initiate steps accordingly.

`Presently, Covid-19 infectivity level is only 0.8 per cent in the province. It is very low but we are doing only 2,000 PCRs per day which cannot reflect the true scenario about the scale of the infection,` a senior health of ficial told Dawn.

The department has directed all the districts to expedite testing of the suspected people and contacts of the positive patients and increase the number of tests to at least 7,500 per day. The province recorded 29confirmed cases on Tuesday, making the total infections 219,975 of whom 213,413 patients including 12 recorded during the last 24 hours have recovered from the infectious ailment, according to a report of health department.

The report said that Peshawar recorded 18 infections, Mardan eight and Abbottabad two. A total of 2,154 tests were conducted in the province.

Officials said that health department started regular meetings to discuss Covid19 situation and decided to enhance testing to know the real number of infections in the province. `We fear that the pandemic might return with more veracity as people have already stopped wearing masks and following other standard operating proce dures. In this situation increasing testing is the only method to detect positive cases and take measures accordingly,` they added.

They said that bed occupancy in the hospitals of Khyber Pakhtunwa was only27 per cent. `It is only one per cent of the total 2,700 beds allocated for coronavirus patients in different hospitals of the province. Only two patients are in intensive care unit and one is on ventilator. It shows that the situation is under control,` they added.

However, of ficials said that they needed torecordzerocases atleastfor20 daysfor which more testing was required. They said that during the last 24 hours, five new patients were hospitalised and four were discharged from hospitals. `Therefore, we have asked the medical teaching institutions to conduct at least 100 tests per day each, Category-D hospitals 30 and rural health centres 20,` they added.

They said that district teams engaged in the Covid-19 efforts were also directed to test at least 15 contacts of the positive padents and lookfor the invesugadon of the suspected people as part of the decision to increase testing.

`We need to utilise the PCR laborato-ries established in 15 districts across the province during Covid-19 epidemic. There is trained staff, machines and other items due to which conducting tests is not a problem. We have already sent a summary to health secretary, who will send it to chief secretary and chief minister via health minister to extend health emergency from July 1 for another three months,` said of ficials.

They said that health department had also taken notice of slow pace of vaccination and directed the authorities concerned to increase immunisation against coronavirus to ensure safety of the people as new variants were being reported across the world.

Of ficials said that so f ar, about 74.34 per cent people in the province had received nrst dose of vaccine, 56.07 per cent received second dose and only five per cent were given booster dose. They added that health department wanted to expedite the pace of vaccination.