As the Covid-19 pandemic has engulfed entire J&K, Pulwama and Kupwara districts have recorded the highest case fatality in Kashmir division.
As per the official data, among the 10 districts of Kashmir division, Pulwama has the highest case fatality of 1.28 percent followed by district Kupwara with 1.27 percent.
Pulwama district in south Kashmir has reported a total of 12,518 Covid positive cases and 161 deaths related to Covid-19.
The north Kashmir’s Kupwara district has reported 138 fatalities so far while 11,348 Covid cases have been reported in the district.
Though Srinagar district has recorded the majority of deaths attributed to Covid since last year, the fatality rate is higher in these two districts.
Kashmir division has reported 1931 Covid deaths since last year of which 755 have been witnessed in Srinagar district.
According to the officials, Divisional Commissioner Kashmir, Pandurang Pole took serious note of this issue and asked the concerned officials to improve their performance.
“Apart from the observation of the highest case fatality rate, the issue of district Kupwara having done a minimum number of tests per million per day (1484) during the last three weeks was also deliberated upon,” officials said.
As per the copy of minutes of the meeting chaired by the divisional commissioner Kashmir, it was also revealed that district Kulgam and Baramulla have not tested 1075 and 202 RAT negative symptomatic patients by RT-PCR during the last three weeks.
“District Kupwara has tested the minimum number (956) of symptomatic cases (45 cases per day) followed by district Ganderbal (1663 with 79 cases per day) during the last three weeks,” it states.
“The divisional commissioner Kashmir expressed his satisfaction over the status of Covid-19 testing and complimented all the districts on complying to the minimum target of 1500 tests per million population per day,” it reads. “The divisional commissioner Kashmir has expressed his displeasure over the fact that many areas with clustering of Covid-19 cases have not been notified as containment zones and directed to consider such areas for notification.”
It said that he also directed to ensure 100 percent testing of all eligible populations in the micro-containment zones within three days of notification besides putting in place effective surveillance measures and targeted testing.
Kashmir is under corona curfew for the past 30 days, however, as per the experts the lockdown has started to show its impact as the number of daily Covid-19 positive cases had shown a downward trend during the past week.