Category: Health

Lahore (Nut-Desk)

The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) said on Thursday that COVID-19 vaccination centers are open across the country after Eid ul Azha-related one day holiday.

In a Twitter message, the NCOC asked citizens to get vaccinated at the earliest to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic. It added that the vaccination centers will remain closed only once a week on Sundays.  During the past 24 hours, the COVID-19 claimed 40 more lives across the country, taking the death toll from the disease to 22,928.

As many as 2,158 new cases of Covid-19 emerged when 34,216 samples were tested, according to the latest National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) update.

The positivity rate of infections was recorded at 6.3 per cent, it said. The country’s caseload climbed to 998,609 after 2,158 new cases were detected.

A total of 2,525 patients are in critical care at hospitals across the country, the NCOC said, adding 895 people recuperated from the disease in the past 24 hours, taking the number of people who have recovered since the pandemic began to 922,929.

Sindh remains the topmost affected province with 361,160 cases followed by Punjab with 351,592 COVID-19 cases. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has reported 141,288 cases, Islamabad, 85,179, Balochistan 29,301 cases while Gilgit Baltistan has reported 7,551 COVID-19 cases and AJK registered 22,538 cases.

Lahore (Nut-Desk)

Pakistan’s coronavirus tally on Friday crossed the grim milestone of 1 million after the country reported 1,425 cases during the last 24 hours, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) announced on Friday.

According to the NCOC, 25,215 tests were conducted in the last 24 hours and the positivity ratio was below six per cent. The current positivity rate stands at 5.65% and the total number of cases are 1,000,034.

The NCOC reported the grim milestone exactly two months after Pakistan’s tally of positive cases crossed 900,000.

The nationwide death toll from the coronavirus now stands 22,939 after 11 people lost their lives to the disease. While the number of recovered patients stands at 923,472 and the active cases of the country are 53,623.

Coronavirus has cast a pall on Eid ul Adha celebrations for a second consecutive year, as Muslims across Pakistan celebrate the religious festival.

Eid celebrations in the country come at a time when a steady rise in COVID-19 cases has been witnessed and the threat of the Delta variant looms large. Owing to the potential of Eid becoming a super spreader event — and a probable cause for the fourth wave — the government has urged the nation to scale back on gatherings.

Lahore (Nut-Desk)

The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) on Tuesday declared compliance of guidelines issued on the occasion of Eidul Adha particularly standard of operating procedures (SOPs) for Eid prayer congregations critical to contain disease spread.

The NCOC session held with Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar in chair where the meeting reviewed implementation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) on Eidul Adha and spread of the pandemic in Karachi and Gilgit-Baltistan.

The forum was briefed that instructions have been issued to the provincial administrations of all federating units to ensure implementation of SOPs pertaining to Eidul Adha.

The forum expressed satisfaction over additional steps taken by Sindh government in view of COVID-19 outbreak. The forum was informed that keeping in view the surging disease spread, some 500 oxygen cylinders and 30 ventilators were added in Gilgit-Baltistan.

The forum was briefed on capacity building of vaccination facilities. “At present, over half a million COVID-19 vaccines are being administered daily in the country,” the forum was informed. The forum announced that the vaccination centers across the country would remain closed only on first day of Eidul Adha.

The forum was told that huge stocks of Moderna vaccine were provided to vaccination centers for inoculations of individuals and students going abroad.

In this regard, instructions have been issued to the administrations of all the provinces to ensure implementation of SOPs. Earlier in a tweet, Asad Umar said that complete restrictions could only be lifted in the country until a major portion of the population fully got vaccinated against COVID-19.

“The number of people administered vaccine in a single day crossed 600,000 mark yesterday (Monday) for first time in the country”, the minister who also chairs meeting of National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) wrote.

However he said although the rising number of inoculated people is an encouraging sign but it needed further boost so that all type of restrictions in every field of life were lifted as soon as possible. Asad Umar said the UK was an excellent lesson of vaccination minimizing health impact of COVID.

Sharing graphs in his tweet, the minister pointed out that the cases had risen in current wave in UK at about the same rate as previous wave, but number of people needing hospitalization was much less due to high rate of vaccination achieved.