Staff Reporter
Islamabad
Pakistan’s novel Coronavirus death toll has surged to 8,724 with the virus claiming 71 lives in the last 24 hours, data issued by the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) showed on Saturday.
The highest fatality rates of 2.8% and 2.6% have been observed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab respectively. The two provinces are closely followed by Azad Jammu and Kashmir with a fatality rate of 2.4% while Gilgit Baltistan reported 2.0% and Sindh 1.6%. Balochistan has the lowest fatality rate of 0.98%. With 32 people dying of the novel coronavirus, Punjab recorded the most deaths across the country in the past 24 hours. Sindh reported 22, KP and Islamabad recorded five and two died in AJK.
Since the beginning of December, Pakistan is losing about 57 lives on average per day as 634 people have died of Covid-19 in the past 11 days. During the early months of the pandemic, the country was reporting as many as 139 deaths every day with a mortality rate of over 2.14%. The current rate stands at 2.0%. Out of the 41,426 PCR tests conducted across the country, SARS-CoV-2 was detected in 2,729 on Friday, raising the country’s coronavirus tally to 435,056. Karachi continues to report the highest positivity rate at 20.88% followed by Peshawar at 15.05% and Muzaffarabad at 11.20%.
Meanwhile, novel coronavirus has claimed life of Dr. Zainab, who was head of Pathology Department at Khyber Medical College, Peshawar. Dr. Zainab was admitted to a hospital after testing positive for the virus.
According to provincial doctors association, the novel coronavirus has claimed lives of 28 doctors in the province. Till now 192,735 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Sindh, 126,526 in Punjab, 51,404 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 34,300 in Islamabad, 17,696 in Balochistan, 7,620 in Azad Kashmir and 4,775 in Gilgit-Baltistan.
