ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s coronavirus positivity rate fell to 2.51 percent overnight as the country reported only 961 new infections, the NCOC data showed Tuesday. The national Covid-19 body said that the new cases surfaced after it conducted 38,139 diagnostic tests countrywide during the last 24 hours. The new cases pushed Pakistan’s overall case count to 1,502,641. However, the active cases witnessed a further decline as 2,393 patients recovered overnight, pushing the country’s active case count down to 66,227. Meanwhile, the country’s daily death count also dropped to 13, the lowest since January 24, when Pakistan reported only eight COVID-19 deaths in a single day. The latest additions placed the total number of deaths Pakistan has reported since the pandemic to 30,053.
Meanwhile, the Sindh government on Tuesday announced revised Covid-19 restrictions for the province as the country battles the fifth wave of the pandemic. The new restrictions are set to take effect from today (February 22), and will last till “revised earlier if the periodical review of the COVID-19 situation warrants”.
Earlier, today the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) removed three cities from the list of cities/districts where it earlier decided to keep restrictions in place, as Covid-19 positivity rates declined countrywide.
The forum, last week, issued a list of six cities/districts where the Covid-19 positivity was higher than 10%, saying that the already enforced restrictions will remain in place there. However, after witnessing a declining coronavirus trend in half of these cities, the NCOC removed Karachi, Hyderabad and Peshawar from the list. TLTP
