Islamabad : The number of patients being diagnosed with coronavirus illness, COVID-19 from Islamabad Capital Territory and Rawalpindi district has been on a continuous rise for the last one week.
In the last week, as many as 853 patients have been tested positive for the infection from the region at an average of around 122 patients per day. It is important that in December 2021, the average number of patients reported from the twin cities had dropped down to below 40 per day.
Many experts are expecting a further increase in the number of COVID-19 cases particularly after a rise in the number of COVID-19 Omicron variant cases in the federal capital. Well over 300 Omicron cases have so far been confirmed from ICT. It is believed that the Omicron variant spreads at a much faster speed as compared to contemporary lineages of SARS-COV-2 (in general COVID-19) variants.
The positivity rate of COVID-19 has already jumped to around 2.75 per cent in the region that was being recorded as well below 0.5 per cent in December. In Rawalpindi, the positivity rate of the infection was recorded as 2.62 per cent in the last 24 hours while in ICT, it was around 3 per cent.
Data collected by ‘The News’ on Tuesday reveals that the virus claimed no life from the region in the last eight days though 2,191 patients belonging to the twin cities had already lost their lives due to the illness while 135 new patients were tested positive for the infection in the last 24 hours from ICT and Rawalpindi district taking the tally to 146,236.
To date, a total of 1,224 patients have died of COVID-19 from Rawalpindi district while the virus has so far claimed as many as 967 lives from the federal capital.
In the last 24 hours, as many as 99 patients were tested positive for COVID-19 from ICT taking the tally to 109,495 of which 107,709 patients belonging to the federal capital have achieved a cure. The number of active cases from ICT jumped to 819 on Tuesday after the addition of 59 active cases to the existing pool in the last 24 hours.
Meanwhile, confirmation of 36 new cases from the Rawalpindi district took the tally to 36,741. To date, a total of 35,301 patients from the district had recovered from the illness while the number of active cases of the infection belonging to Rawalpindi was recorded as 216 on Tuesday of which 15 patients were hospitalised in the district and 201 patients were in home isolation.