Staff Reporter
Islamabad
The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) on Wednesday discussed the testing strategy for educational institutions ahead of the likely September 15 reopening date, so that timely detection of the disease proliferation or pandemic hotspots, can be ensured.
The meeting comes as Pakistan after six days reported 18 deaths for the first time.
While chairing the meeting, Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar said the sequence designed to open up educational institutions had been agreed by the Ministry of Education.
However, the next major challenge was to enforce safety protocols and health guidelines in around 300,000 educational institutions across the country and all focus should be directed towards this.
The forum was apprised that a four-strand strategy was devised for testing in educational institutions. It was briefed that the strategy had been formed keeping in view 20 major high risk cities with 76% of the total Covid-19 cases reported in the country.
Meanwhile, Pakistan reported 441 new cases of the novel coronavirus over the last 24 hours, lifting the national tally of cases to 296,590. According to the National Command and Operation Centre, eighteen more people succumbed to the highly contagious disease during this period, pushing the death toll from the virus to 6,318.
The number of active cases has gone down to 8,813 as 281,459 Covid-19
patients have recuperated from the disease. As many as 20,480 samples were tested during the previous 24 hours, bringing the number of tests conducted so far to more than 2.6 million.
There are 1,039 patients under treatment in 735 hospitals across the country, out of whom 90 are on ventilators.
On Sept 1, the World Health Organization had warned that countries with significant active spread of coronavirus must prevent amplifying events, as opening up without the virus being under control would be a “recipe for disaster.”