KARACHI: Mayor of Karachi, Wasim Akhtar, demanded of Sindh government on Friday to establish a central helpline so that the people could know about capacity in hospitals.
Addressing a meeting on measures to combat the coronavirus at hospitals under the administrative control of the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, Akhtar said that patients and their family members should be informed about available beds and ventilators at the helpline 24/7.
He said the patients and their family members faced hardships in finding beds and visited many hospitals.
"The patients who need urgent treatment are being forced to go to many hospitals," he said.
He said that the helpline was the need of the hour for coordination among all the hospitals treating COVID-19 patients.
The mayor said that there was no mechanism to cope with the coronavirus pandemic in the absence of a helpline for the patients.
He said that six to seven patients visited filter clinics established by the KMC. They were asked to admit to hospitals but they were not being guided at the government level.
He also expressed his concerns over the surge in the number of the coronavirus patients and appealed to the people to adopt precautionary measures.
Akhtar said that the situation was getting worse after opening of the shopping malls and public transport. "Now the number of patients exceeded the number of affected people in China," he added.
The mayor said that more people were being diagnosed with COVID-19 and yet the people were not taking it seriously. He said that the situation was worse in the interior of the province.
"Patients are dying across the country, but the people are still unwilling to adopt precautionary measures," he added.
Akhtar said that the traders had assured the government that they would follow the standard operating procedures, but it could not happen. He said that the people were ignoring SOPs in public transport as well. He said that hospitals in Karachi were out of space, and if the situation continued, hospitals would not be able to take in more patients.