Twin cities log five more corona deaths, 682 new cases

Islamabad: Number of coronavirus illness, COVID-19 cases from Islamabad Capital Territory and Rawalpindi district is registering a sharp increase making the situation much alarming as in the last 24 hours, another 682 patients have been tested positive for the infection while the virus has claimed another five lives from the region taking the death toll from the twin cities to 1,858.

In the last four days, as many as 2,487 patients have been diagnosed with COVID-19 from ICT and Rawalpindi district making an average of 622 patients per day while the virus has claimed another 15 lives and despite all this, almost all educational institutions are operating in the region.

It is worth mentioning here that during the third wave of COVID-19 outbreak, the government authorities directed to close down all educational institutions in the middle of March this year when the positivity rate of the infection was below eight per cent and the number of cases reported per day on average from the twin cities was less than 400.

The average positivity ratio of the infection from the twin cities has been over 10 per cent for the last one week while in Rawalpindi district, it has been recorded as 13.15 per cent in the last 24 hours.

Data collected by ‘The News’ on Saturday reveals that the virus claimed two more lives from ICT in the last 24 hours taking the death toll from the federal capital to 811 while three more patients died of COVID-19 from Rawalpindi district in the last 24 hours taking the death toll from the district to 1,047.

Confirmation of 682 new cases took tally from the region to 118,115 of which 1858 patients had lost their lives. It is important that the number of cases being tested positive from the region has been showing a tremendous upward trend for the last week. In the last 24 hours, another 524 patients have been tested positive from ICT and 158 from Rawalpindi district. To date, a total of 90,093 patients have been confirmed positive for COVID-19 from ICT of which 84,519 have recovered. On Saturday, the number of active cases from the federal capital jumped to 4,763 after the addition of 146 active cases to the existing pool in the last 24 hours.

From Rawalpindi district, a total of 28,022 patients have so far been reported of which 25,354 have recovered from the illness. On Saturday, there were a total of 1,621 active cases of the disease from Rawalpindi of which 87 patients belonging to the district were hospitalized while some 1,534 were in isolation at their homes.