Healthcare workers have been at the frontlines for over 15 months in the COVID pandemic all over the world, so it's no surprise that they have been affected most adversely by the deadly flu bug. Hundreds of thousands of healthcare providers have been reported to contract the coronavirus infection across the globe and Pakistan is no exception.

The third wave of Covid is proving to be quite serious in our country as 5,234 new cases and 83 new deaths were reported yesterday. A total of 50,170 PCR tests for Covid were conducted in the country. The coronavirus positivity rate of the country (that is the percentage of newly confirmed cases out of the total tests conducted) remained 10.43% in the last 24 hours. Our healthcare workers are also being infected in big numbers daily.

According to the latest COVID-19 statistics provided by the National Command and Operations Center (NCOC), a total of 15,141 Pakistani healthcare heroes have been reported to contract the novel viral infection to date.

• Just in the last 24 hours, 41 healthcare workers contracted the coronavirus infection.

Currently, there are at least 481 HCW with the active viral infection. While 14,515 have successfully recovered from the nasty disease. The number of Covid casualties among the healthcare providers in Pakistan currently stands at 145 as 92 doctors, 1 medical student, 3 nurses, and 49 paramedic staff have succumbed to the viral infection in this pandemic.

The province of Sindh with 5,524 reported Covid cases among the HCWs leads among all regions of the country.

Our HCWs have been fighting bravely on the frontlines against the lethal flu bug with minimal support provided by the government. Essential medical supplies needed in an infectious outbreak like Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs), N95 masks, gloves, and sanitizers, etc. have been not provided adequately to our health workers which have led to a rise in the number of Coronavirus infections among them. The government must provide all the necessary resources to our health heroes as soon as possible as we can not afford to lose any more precious lives.