The nation recorded 100 deaths from coronavirus over the past 24 hours for a second consecutive day during the ongoing third wave of the pandemic, the Ministry of National Health Services (NHS) said on Saturday.
The nation had registered 103 deaths on April 5, 102 on April 6, and 105 on April 9, which were the record daily toll since December last year.
With fresh fatalities, the nationwide death toll reached to 15,329.
Meanwhile, the government portal reported 5,139 new infections of the coronavirus after conducting 49,069 tests, receiving back a positivity rate of 10.47 per cent. It was the third day in a row, in which the country reported more than 5,000 cases.
The new cases pushed the total caseload to 715,968.
Some 627,561 patients have so far recovered, whereas the number of active cases reached to 73,078. The country recovery ratio dropped from 95 per cent to 87.7 per cent while the fatality ratio also increased to 2.1 per cent, according to the data.
Meanwhile, the total number of coronavirus patients in Sindh has reached to 268,284 while 4,523 people have died in the province so far.
The total number of coronavirus patients in Punjab is 245,923 and 6,908 people have died due to the virus, while the total number of patients in Balochistan is 20,178 and the death toll is 213.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), the number of coronavirus patients have been recorded at 97,318 with 2,586 deaths while in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), 5,103 cases have been reported while 103 people have lost their lives to the disease.
According to the portal, the total number of coronavirus patients in Islamabad is 64,902 and 601 patients have died from the virus so far.
The government is struggling to contain the third wave of Covid-19 with authorities continuing to tighten social distancing and movement restrictions, implementing the ban on all gatherings in hotspots.
Infections have risen sharply in the country in recent days with over 42,000 Covid-19 cases reported in the first nine days of April.
The doctors and other frontline health workers have also suffered from the pandemic and so far 15,304 have been infected by the virus since last year, while 145 have died, including 92 doctors across the country.
GENERAL PUBLIC VACCINATIONS:
Earlier this week, Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar announced to start vaccinating the general public after Eidul Fitr.
In his conversation with reporters, the minister said that the next five to six weeks were “critical” for the third wave of infections.
The government launched the vaccination for the general public in March, starting with older people. It is currently offering free doses to frontline healthcare workers and people over the age of 50, but the drive has thus far been slow.
The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) on Thursday approved China’s Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use, the National Institute of Health in Islamabad confirmed the following day.
According to a statement released by the DRAP, the vaccine developed by Chinese pharmaceutical company Sinovac has been given emergency use authorisation for people aged 18 and above.
The statement further said the authorisation will be reviewed every quarter keeping in view data regarding the safety, efficacy, and quality of the vaccine.
The authorities are also grappling with a high degree of vaccination hesitancy among the people, even among health workers.
The private sale of shots begun over the weekend. Thousands of people rushed to get inoculated in the first round of commercial sales of the jabs. The first round saw the commercial sale of the two-shot Russian Sputnik-V for about Rs12,000 for a pack of two doses.
In his talk, Umar had also noted with concern that the number of intensive care unit (ICU) patients in the country was higher than during the first wave. “Strict enforcement of SOPs [standard operating procedures] can bring down the rising rate of infection,” he stressed.
