1,771 new infections take total Covid-19 caseload to 922,824

Pakistan recorded 1,771 new confirmed cases of Covid19 on Monday with a test positivity rate of 3.72 percent, marking a substantial drop in its daily cases, the National Command and Operation Center said on Tuesday.

According to the NCOC, the total number of confirmed cases in the country rose to 922,824 Tuesday, including 844,638 recoveries.

There are currently 57,336 active cases being treated in hospitals across the country, with 3,842 of them being in critical condition.

According to the NCOC, 71 more deaths from the coronavirus epidemic were recorded in the last 24 hours nationwide, raising the Covid-19 related death toll to 20,850.

Punjab has reported the highest number of both confirmed cases and deaths, at 340,110 and 10,039 in total respectively, followed by Sindh with 318,579 confirmed cases and 5,039 deaths. The NCOC said on its website that Pakistan has administered a total of 7,337,187 Covid-19 vaccine doses across the country, with 1,985,005 people fully vaccinated so far.

Strict restrictive measures backed by vaccination have enabled a declining trend of the Covid-19 positivity ratio as the country reported a rate below 5 percent for the eighth consecutive day on Monday.

According to data released by the NCOC, the health department conducted 47,633 tests on Monday, detecting a positivity rate of 3.71 percent.

Earlier in March and April, the nation saw a positivity ratio of over 11 percent several times, leading the government to impose strict measures, including the closure of educational institutions, markets, public parks, wedding halls, restaurants, public transport and all other venues of mass gatherings, especially during the Eidul Fitr holidays.

In May, the positivity rate dropped to over 9 percent and went down further to below 5 percent, the official data showed.

However, Minister of State for National Health Services Dr Faisal Sultan warned the country was “not out of the woods yet”.

“It seems at this point that I don’t foresee an Indialike situation [in Pakistan],” Sultan told Voice of America in an interview.

He was of the view that an “effective” screening system for international travellers and other measures to deal with the outbreak have so far enabled the country to keep the situation under control.

He noted that while his team has also detected a few cases of the variants prevalent in South African and

Brazil, Pakistan is one of nearly 100 countries where a variant first detected in the United Kingdom, known as B.1.1.7, is currently predominant.

“A large part of this wave that they [India] are going through, at least as best as I am aware, it was B117, and it was not necessarily the Indian variant that was doing it,” he said.

MORE DOSES ARRIVE: The government will start vaccination of 18-year-olds from June 3 (Thursday) across the country.

In a tweet, Minister for Planning and Development National Command and Operation Centre chief Asad Umar announced the vaccination of all the eligible age groups would be carried out in line with the body’s decision.

Half a million doses of Sinopharm vaccine arrived in Islamabad from Beijing via a special Pakistan International Airlines flight, Associated Press of Pakistan reported.

While another 500,000 doses of the drug will be airlifted from Beijing Wednesday (tomorrow) via the national flag-carrier, Qadir Bux Sangi, PIA country manager in China, told APP.

The government has decided to run a massive vaccination drive across the country and inoculate 70 million doses to fight the pandemic. So far, nearly 5.3 million people have been vaccinated.