PESHAWAR, AUG 13 (DNA) – The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has imposed a smart lockdown in four areas of Peshawar to curb the rising coronavirus cases in the city.

A notification was issued by the office of the deputy commissioner of Peshawar on Friday. Entry and exit points of these areas will be sealed from August 13 to August 31. Shops, malls, and businesses in the localities will remain shut during these days.

 All gatherings, weddings, and ceremonies have been banned. Only essential services will remain open such as pharmacies, general stores, clinics, and hospitals. Commissioner, assistant commissioners, and other police officers will be responsible for ensuring SOPs are strictly implemented.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health ministry has revealed that the Delta variant is on a rise in the province. The Delta variant of the coronavirus, also known as the Indian variant, has spread to more than 70 countries. It was first detected in India in December 2020. It is highly transmissible and appears to be more severe.

The emergence of this variant “is a serious cloud on the horizon”, says Bill Hanage, an associate professor at Harvard Chan School of Public Health. “Delta is bad; even if we don’t know exactly how bad; recent work has pegged it at maybe 40% more transmissible than the variant we’ve been dealing with until recently.”

The variant appears to cause severe symptoms such as: Stomach pain; Nausea; Vomiting; Loss of appetite; Hearing loss; and Joint pain. Other symptoms include skin rash, change in the colour of toes, sore throat, shortness of breath, as well as loss of smell, diarrhea, headache, and runny nose.

Vaccines aren’t a perfect defence. Some fully vaccinated people needed hospital treatment and died after catching the variant. This variant’s advantage over the Alpha one is its ability to partially evade the immune system in people who are already vaccinated. = DNA

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