ISLAMABAD: Struggling to contain the third wave of Covid-19, Pakistan reported 112 new deaths over the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of fatalities to 16,094, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) said Saturday.
The government portal registered 4,976 new infections of the coronavirus after conducting 65,279 tests, receiving back a positivity ratio of 7.6 per cent. The new cases brought the total number of confirmed cases to 750,158.
There are currently 79,108 active cases of Covid-19 in the country, with 4,149 in critical condition, the NCOC said.
Sindh has been the worst hit with 271,524 cases followed by Punjab, where 264,010 people have been tested positive, the NCOC said in a statement.
The statistics suggest most deaths occurred in Punjab, 62, followed by Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 36.
Meanwhile, the government has decided to start vaccination of people in the age group of 50 to 59 from Wednesday.
A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of the NCOC chaired by Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar.
In a tweet, the minister for planning, who also heads NCOC, once again asked the people to register themselves for the vaccination.
Last week, Asad had said that increased restrictions, broader lockdowns, and strong enforcement of standard operating procedures (SOPs) have started to give dividends. The rising trend of positivity rate has been flattened, but the number of critical patients and mortality will stay at high levels for some time due to the momentum of the last two weeks, he had said.
So far, more than 1 million people have been vaccinated, and the total number of people who have registered themselves for vaccination is now over 2 million, according to Umar.
Private hospitals in major cities have also started inoculation with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine imported by a private pharmaceutical company.
Health experts believe that the variant of Covid-19 initially discovered in the United Kingdom has been behind the surge in the number of infections in the country.
“The new variant seemed to be more contagious and deadly, and the only way we can control it is to shut all kinds of activities that may play role in the spread of the disease,” Ejaz Ahmad Khan, an infectious disease specialist at the Shifa International Hospital in Islamabad, told Xinhua.
He said that the government is trying hard to control the situation, but the cooperation of the Pakistani people is also very important. “Solely, the government cannot take control of this fatal disease without our help.”
