71 more die as corona killing spree continues

ISLAMABAD: Another 71 COVID-19 patients died across the country in the last 24 hours, taking the death toll to 8,724, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) reported on Saturday.

“In all, 2,470 patients are in critical condition across Pakistan and their number is rising fast,” said the Center in its daily COVID-19 situation report.

The National Positivity Ratio is 6.59% with Karachi reporting the highest positivity ratio of 20.88% followed by Peshawar 15.05%, Muzaffarabad 11.20%, Rawalpindi 9.94%, Abbottabad 8.60%, Hyderabad 8.33% and Mirpur 7.87%.

Lahore where the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM) is set to stage a public meeting on Sunday (today) in the registered 4.56% positivity ratio in the last 24 hours.

Pakistan currently has 2% fatality rate against global rate of 2.24%.

The highest fatality rates of 2.8% and 2.6% have been observed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab respectively. The two provinces are followed by Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) with a fatality rate of 2.4%, Gilgit Baltistan 2.0% and Sindh 1.6%.

Balochistan has the lowest fatality rate of 0.98%.

With 32 people dying of the novel Coronavirus, Punjab recorded the most deaths in the past 24 hours. Sindh reported 22, KP and Islamabad recorded five and two died in AJK.

Since the beginning of December, Pakistan is losing about 57 lives on average per day, as 634 people have died of COVID-19 in the past 11 days.

During the early months of the pandemic, the country was reporting as many as 139 deaths every day with a mortality rate of over 2.14%.

Out of 41,426 PCR tests conducted across the country, SARS-CoV-2 was detected in 2,729 on Friday, raising the country's coronavirus tally to 435,056.

With 1,489 people testing positive, Sindh continues to report highest positivity rate of 12.91%. Punjab reported 629 new infections with a positivity rate of 3.87%, while Balochistan's rate stands at 10.48% with 46 new cases.

At least 42 people tested positive for the virus in AJK as the region's positivity rate remains above 8%. With 252 new infections, KP's positivity rate stands at 4.12% and GB's at 1.23%.

The positivity rate in the federal capital was registered at 4.27%.

At 87.68%, Pakistan has one of the highest recovery rates in the world as a total of 381,208 survived the deadly disease - 2,116 in the past 24 hours only.

The highest recovery rate has been observed in Balochistan as 96% of the COVID-19 patients have tested negative after recovering from the virus followed by GB at 95.15% and Punjab 91.06%. KP has reported a recovery rate of 88% and Sindh at 86% while Islamabad and AJK recorded 79.8% and 79.2% respectively.

However, 58% hospitalized patients remained on ventilators while 91% deceased were on also ventilators.

Federal Minister for Planning and Development and NCOC head Asad Umar had already said there was a rapid increase in infections during the second wave, as the public was less serious than it was during the first wave.