ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Wednesday urged people to take necessary precautions against the coronavirus, as Pakistan reported the highest single-day COVID-19 infections in three months.
Pakistan reported over 500 coronavirus cases for the first time since March, according to official data from the country’s health ministry, with the positivity ratio in Karachi, the country’s largest city, recorded at 18 percent.
Pakistan last reported over 500 infections on March 16, when 514 people contracted the disease. According to official data from the National Institute of Health (NIH), 15,462 coronavirus tests were conducted in the last 24 hours, out of which 541 turned out positive. One person succumbed to the respiratory infection while the national positivity rate was 3.5 percent.
PM Sharif asked people to be more careful while chairing a meeting of Pakistan’s federal ministers and provincial chief secretaries.
“In view of the resurgence of coronavirus cases in the country, I urge the entire nation to follow coronavirus-related SOPs [standard operating procedures] and directives,” he said in a Twitter post.
The prime minister was informed during the meeting about the new omicron variant of the virus and how it had recently led to an increase in the number of cases in Pakistan, said the state-run Radio Pakistan.
Pakistan disbanded the National Command and Operations Center, its main pandemic response body, on March 31 as infections fell to the lowest since the outbreak began in 2020.
But as COVID-19 cases rise again, the government has called for the Center to start working again and the Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) has made it mandatory for all passengers on domestic flights to wear masks as a protective measure.
“After a slight change in Covid-19 cases in some cities, the NCOC has recommended mask-wearing on all domestic flights, railways, and public transport within the country is mandatory,” the NIH said on Monday. “So all citizens are requested to wear a face mask during travel.”
Authorities are also now urging all eligible individuals not to delay getting booster vaccine shots. Pakistan has administered at least 267,200,445 doses of COVID-19 vaccines so far. Assuming every person needs two doses, that’s enough to have vaccinated about 61.7 percent of the country’s population.
