Pak Army orders 2m doses of Sputnik V vaccine

ISLAMABAD: In order to help the country fight coronavirus pandemic, the Pakistan Army has ordered two million doses of Russian Covid vaccine Sputnik V, as 135 patients lost their lives and 2,566 people tested positive during the last 24 hours.

An agreement for the jabs has been finalised and the first consignment of 200,000 doses is all set to arrive in Pakistan. A special aircraft of Pakistan Air Force will airlift the vaccine doses from Abu Dhabi. According to the latest update issued by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), coronavirus claimed 135 lives and infected 2,566 people, while 2,989 patients recovered from the deadly disease during the last 24 hours.

Among the 135 deaths, 113 patients were under treatment in hospitals and 22 in their respective quarantines or homes. Around 77 patients were on ventilators.

Maximum ventilators were occupied in four major areas – Lahore, 58 per cent; Multan, 65 per cent; Bahawalpur, 48 per cent; and Peshawar, 37 per cent. Around 560 ventilators were occupied elsewhere in the country, while no Covid-affected person was on ventilator in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and Balochistan. The national Covid positivity ratio during the last 24 hours was recorded as 8.61 per cent. Around 795,511 people have so far recovered from the disease across Pakistan making it a significant count with over 90 per cent recovery ratio.

Since the pandemic outbreak, a total of 882,928 cases have been detected across the country. Punjab has reported 328,775 coronavirus cases; Sindh, 299,913; Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 127,224; Balochistan, 23,931; Islamabad, 79,371; AJK, 18,286; and GB 5,428. The nationwide tally of fatalities jumped to 19,752 on Tuesday. A total of 12,510,568 corona tests, including 29,801 during the last 24 hours, have so far been conducted across the country, while 639 hospitals are equipped with Covid facilities. Some 4,799 corona patients were admitted in hospitals across the country, while 4,361 were in critical condition.