Pakistan reports 53 COVID-19 deaths, 1,302 cases in one day

Islamabad: Pakistan on Friday reported 53 deaths and 1,302 new cases of COVID-19 in a period of 24 hours. With these latest figures the country’s total number of cases have surged to 551,842 and death toll to 11,886. According to the National Command and Operation Control (NCOC) data, there are 1,903 critical cases in the country while the number of active cases are still above 30,000. The data also showed that 1,684 coronavirus patients recovered during the last 24 hours. The total number of recoveries has surged to 507,502 while the recovery rate is 92.0 per cent.

School in Lahore closed for seven days

A government girls High school in Lahore’s Nishat Colony has been closed for seven days after cases of the novel coronavirus were reported in the institution. According to a notification from the District Education Officer, a team of the health department reported that COVID-19 cases were detected in the school, which it termed a “very serious condition”.

Vaccination drive picks up

The vaccination drive in Karachi and Islamabad has picked up as frontline health workers are being inoculated at the health centres.

District Health officer (DHO) of Islamabad Dr Zaeem Zia in a tweet said that all the health facilities of Islamabad were active. Vaccine is safe and no one developed any single minor issue, he further said.

In Karachi too, the COVID-19 vaccination drive is picking up pace, as there are some issues in registration of the frontline health workers, health authorities said.

Some doctors and paramedics who sent their national identity card (NIC) numbers to 1166 to get registered for vaccination were informed that it (vaccination drive) has not yet started.

There are also some fears/apprehensions regarding vaccination quality and its efficacy and the health workers are preferring to wait and see its results on their colleagues, said a doctor and a member of the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA).

4,684 vaccinated

According to the health department data, a total of 4,684 healthcare providers were vaccinated by Thursday at 11 facilities set up in the province. Nine of these centres are set up at local hospitals of Karachi.