The nationwide tally of Covid-19 patients jumped to 9,595 on Tuesday, with 4,255 cases reported in Punjab, 3,053 in Sindh, 1,276 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 495 in Balochistan, 281 in Gilgit-Baltistan, 185 in Islamabad and 50 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
Pakistan’s death toll from the coronavirus reached 201 on Tuesday after Punjab reported four more deaths and Sindh recorded five deaths. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has reported 74 deaths so far, Sindh 66, Punjab 49, Balochistan six and Islamabad and Gilgit Baltistan three each. Azad Jammu and Kashmir has not reported any deaths so far.
At least 2,258 people who attended a religious mass gathering in Raiwind have been tested positive for Covid-19 so far, which accounts for around 27 per cent of the country’s total coronavirus cases. The five-day annual gathering was attended by as many as 70,000 including 3,000 travellers before it was cut short, police said.
The Balochistan health department in its daily situational report on Tuesday said that 30 more people have contracted novel coronavirus to bring the province’s tally to 495. Six people have lost their lives while 165 have recovered from the mysterious disease in the province so far.
The Punjab health department has reported 60 new cases of coronavirus to raise provincial tally to 4,255. This includes 742 pilgrims at quarantine centres, 1,857 members of Tableeghi Jamaat, 91 inmates and 1,545 citizens, according to a situational report issued by the primary and secondary health department on Tuesday.
The first batch of 250 students from Gilgit-Baltistan in Karachi will be tested for coronavirus before being allowed to go back to their howme town, Sindh government’s spokesperson Murtaza Wahab said in a tweet on Tuesday. “1st batch of 250 students from Gilgit-Baltistan in Karachi is being registered in Shah Faisal Town, District Korangi for #COVID?19 tests. Insha’Allah the ones who test negative will be allowed to go back to GB with test results. All tests are being done free of cost by #SindhGovt,” he said.
On Tuesday, global coronavirus infections surpassed 2.5 million, according to a Reuters tally, with US cases nearing 800,000. It took around 75 days for the first 500,000 cases to be reported, and just six days for the most recent half million to be registered.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Tuesday denied theories that the novel coronavirus was manipulated of produced in a laboratory, saying that all available evidence suggests the novel coronavirus originated in animals in China late last year. “All available evidence suggests the virus has an animal origin and is not manipulated or constructed in a lab or somewhere else,” WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told a Geneva news briefing. “It is probable, likely, that the virus is of animal origin.”
It was not clear, Chaib said, how the virus had jumped the species barrier to humans but there had ‘certainly’ been an intermediate animal host. “It most likely has its ecological reservoir in bats but how the virus came from bats to humans is still to be seen and discovered.”
