ISLAMABAD: Pakistan reported 1,649 new cases of coronavirus in the last 24 hours, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) said Monday, marking the first time the nation’s daily infections have risen over 1,600 since October.
On October 2 last year, the country had recorded 1,656 infections.
The NCOC, the department leading the nation’s campaign against the pandemic, said the overall cases surged to 1,305,707 while 1,258,987 of them have recovered.
Statistics 10 Jan 22:
Total Tests in Last 24 Hours: 45,002
Positive Cases: 1649
Positivity %: 3.66%
Deaths :3
Patients on Critical Care: 617— NCOC (@OfficialNcoc) January 10, 2022
The active cases also increased to 17,748, including 617 those who are in critical condition.
According to the NCOC data, the pandemic killed three people on Sunday, increasing the overall death toll to 28,972.
Meanwhile, a total of 162.1 million doses of coronavirus vaccines have so far been administered, with over 73 million people fully vaccinated and more than 99 million people partially vaccinated.
Last week, the government authorised booster doses for citizens over the age of 30. Children over the age of 12 are being offered vaccinations at their schools.
Meanwhile, the positivity rate in Lahore reached an alarming 7.5 percent after 465 new cases were reported during the last 24 hours.
Following the suit is the port city of Karachi that has since late last week been witnessing an alarming rise in new infections, with the transmission ratio recorded at more than 15 percent, officials from the Sindh Health Department said.
According to the head of Dow Diagnostic Research and Reference Laboratory (DDRRL), 87 percent of the patients were affected with the Omicron variant. Of the infected, 60 percent were women.
To address the challenge, the Karachi administration has launched a door-to-door campaign to vaccinate women, who are lagging behind men in rates of coronavirus inoculation.
“We have found that a sizable population of housewives are unvaccinated, and they socialise and attend weddings without face masks,” Qasim Siraj Soomro, parliamentary secretary health of the Sindh government, told Reuters last week.
In contrast, the rate of vaccination among male family members who go out to work is higher than the rate among women, he added.
The provincial government’s campaign will use female health workers, who have long played an instrumental role in country-wide polio vaccination campaigns in the nation.
“We plan to target clusters in urban areas and at a later stage in rural areas,” said the parliamentary secretary.
The first case of the Omicron variant was reported on December 13 in Karachi, and the federal government has acknowledged that a fifth pandemic has started in the country, with Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad seeing most of the cases.
The government has not yet announced new restrictions but has urged people to follow precautionary measures.
