Staff Reporter
Islamabad
Pakistan reached another grim milestone when fatalities crossed 10,000 deaths in the past 24 hours. By Wednesday morning, the Coronavirus had claimed another 55 lives.
It means the country has so far reported 10,047 deaths since the coronavirus pandemic outbreak in February this year.
On Tuesday, another 23 people died of the virus in Punjab followed by 18 in Sindh, 10 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, three in Islamabad and one in Azad Kashmir.
Meanwhile, the country also recorded 2,155 new coronavirus cases during the same period after which the overall number reached 477,240 as 1,100 more persons tested positive for the virus in Sindh and 626 in Punjab.
The region-wise distribution of the coronavirus cases now stands at: Sindh 213,193, Punjab 137,295, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 57,982, Islamabad 37,556, Balochistan 18,118, Azad Kashmir 8,241 and Gilgit-Baltistan 4,855.
Similarly, the overall deaths-related figures for different provinces/regions are given as: Punjab 3,982, Sindh 3,520, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 1,627, Islamabad 415, Azad Kashmir 220, Balochistan 182 and Gilgit-Baltistan 101.
As far as the number of active cases in the country are concerned, the country currently has 37,080 coronavirus patients – a marked decrease when compared with the previous day’s total of 39,599.
This reduction was made possible after another 4,619 persons fully recovered from the infection, raising the overall number to 430,113. As a result, the number of closed cases [death + people recovering from infection] in Pakistan reached 440,160.
Out of the active cases, 2,714 infected persons are in hospitals with 2,219 of them being at intensive care units due to their critical condition. Moreover, 299 of these critically ill patients have been placed on ventilators. But efforts are also underway to identify, trace and isolate the infected persons to reduce further spread of the coronavirus. Thus, the past 24 hours saw 36,390 tests being administered across the country, increasing the overall number to 6,656,373.
Latin America and the Caribbean became the second region after Europe to top half a million deaths from Covid-19, according to an AFP count based on official tallies.
There have been at least 500,800 deaths among the 29 countries in the region, with more than half of those in Brazil (192,000) and Mexico (120,000).
The milestone came 12 days after Europe passed the half a million mark. It takes the total worldwide deaths to more than 1.78 million, with the US and Canada accounting for over 350,000 and Asia topping 217,000.
Almost 82 million people worldwide have contracted the virus, including more than 15 million in Latin America — the third largest after Europe (26 million) and the US and Canada (20 million.)
Brazil has the largest number of cases in Latin America with more than 7.5 million.
Latin America was the first region to reach 400,000 fatalities.
On Tuesday, Argentina joined Mexico, Chile and Costa Rica in becoming the fourth country in the region to begin a mass immunization program, although it used the controversial Russian Sputnik V vaccine.
The other three countries began vaccinations last week with the jab developed by Pfizer/BioNTech.
