Staff Reporter
Karachi
Pakistan on Tuesday reported its first confirmed case of a new Coronavirus strain detected in the United Kingdom (UK) earlier this year.
According to the Sindh health department, 12 samples of UK returnees were taken for genotyping out of which six were positive and three showed the new variant of the Covid virus in the first phase.
“The genotyping showed 95 per cent match of the new variant from the UK. These samples will go through another phase of genotyping,” said Meeran Yousuf, spokesperson for the Sindh health department.
“Meanwhile, the contact tracing of these patients is in process and their contacts are also being isolated,” she said.
Pakistan has reported 63 deaths in the last 24 hours by novel coronavirus as the number of positive cases has surged to 475,085. The nationwide tally of fatalities has jumped to 9,992 on Tuesday. According to the latest figures by the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), 1,776 persons tested positive for COVID-19 in the past 24 hours.
Sindh remains the worst-hit province by the pandemic in terms of cases followed by Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Islamabad. Punjab has overtaken Sindh in most number of casualties.
Till now 212,093 coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Sindh, 136,669 in Punjab 57,746 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 37,390 in Islamabad, 18,099 in Balochistan, 8,235 in Azad Kashmir and 4,853 in Gilgit-Baltistan.
Furthermore 3,959 individuals have lost their lives to the epidemic in Punjab 3,502 in Sindh, 1,617 in KP, 412 in Islamabad, 219 in Azad Kashmir, 182 in Balochistan, and 101 in GB.
