Claim: Lahore is now the centre of the COVID-19 Omicron variant in Pakistan.

Fact: Lahore’s COVID-19 positivity rate is lower than some other Pakistani cities such as Karachi, Muzaffarabad, Hyderabad and Islamabad, as of 21 January 2022. It may, however, have the highest positivity rate of cities within the province of Punjab.

On 21 January 2022, Facebook page Javed Chaudhry, which has over 4 million followers, claimed in a post that Lahore has become the centre of the Omicron variant as Pakistan fights the fifth wave of COVID-19.

The headline of the aforementioned post is as follows:

لاہور اومی کرون کا گڑھ بن گیا، دھڑا دھڑ کیسز سامنے آنے لگے

[Lahore becomes the centre of Omicron, cases upon cases emerging rapidly]

The post was then picked up by other Facebook pages, including Kainat News,
Subah News Urdu, Daily Sun News and FunHouse, among others.

Fact or Fiction?

Soch Fact Check found this to be misleading because the headline implies that Lahore has the highest number of Coronavirus Omicron cases across the country.

The Omicron variant, which was first detected in Pakistan on 13 December 2021, has become the dominant strain in the country.

As of 31 January 2022, the National Command and Operation Centre’s (NCOC) data suggests that Pakistan recorded 7,048 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. This brings the coronavirus positivity rate in the country to 11.53%.

To verify the claim regarding rising cases of the Omicron variant in Lahore, Soch Fact Check got in touch with Health Department Punjab which confirmed that as at 21 January — the date the misleading post in question was shared — Lahore had the highest positivity ratio in Punjab, 17.9%. 

However, on the same date Karachi recorded the highest positivity rate among all Pakistani cities, 45.43%. 

Health Department Punjab also shared that out of the 690 Omicron variant cases registered in the province of Punjab before and including 21 January 2022, 643 were detected in Lahore. This indicates that Lahore registered the highest number of Omicron variant cases in the province of Punjab only. 

Virality

Soch Fact Check ran a Crowd Tangle analysis with the following search term:

لاہور اومی کرون کا گڑھ بن گیا

[Lahore becomes the centre of Omicron]

The results revealed that over the last seven days, the search term has received 474 interactions across 15 posts. 

The Facebook post shared by Javed Chaudhry has gained 354 likes and 15 shares so far and is also performing 1.6x  better than other similar posts.

The page which shared the claim is verified on Facebook with around 4.2 million followers. Since the page is a local platform and Urdu readership is likely higher, the headline in question is likely to reach a large number of people.

Interestingly, most Facebook pages used the same thumbnail image in their posts. They also carried the story in question with the same headline. 

Conclusion: As at 21 January 2022, Lahore recorded the highest number of COVID-19 Omicron cases in Punjab. However, the city cannot be described as the centre of the dominant variant in the country, with Karachi recording a far higher positivity rate, both on and before 21 January 2022, and at present.

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