Daily Times

Twenty-eight people lost battle of life against Covid-19 during the past 24 hours, surging the overall death toll to 11,914, said the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) on Saturday.

According to the NCOC, 1,286 fresh infections were reported during the aforementioned period and the national tally of cases stands at 553,128. In the past 24 hours, as many as 1,198 patients recovered from the virus, surging the overall recoveries in the country to 508,700.

The NCOC stated that 1,908 patients were in critical condition. The total count of active cases is 32,514 and the positivity rate stands at 3.85 per cent.

During the last 24 hours most of the deaths occurred in Punjab followed by Sindh. The NCOC added that out of the total 28 deaths during the last 24 hours, 18 patients died on ventilators.

The maximum ventilators are occupied in four major areas including Multan, 34 percent, Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), 30 percent, Peshawar, 26 percent, and Lahore, 35 percent.

The maximum Oxygen beds are occupied in four major areas including Peshawar, 44 percent, Multan, 39 percent, Karachi, 25 percent, and Rawalpindi, 25 percent.

Some 33,319 tests were conducted across the country on Friday, including 10,019 in Sindh, 12,243 in Punjab, 6,084 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 3,662 in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), 566 in Balochistan, 350 in GB, and 395 in AJK.

Since the pandemic outbreak, a total of 553,128 cases were detected that also included the perished, recovered and under treatment Covid-19 patients so far, including AJK 9,160, Balochistan 18,849, GB 4,915, ICT 41,819, KP 68,180, Punjab 160,162 and Sindh 250,043.

Meanwhile, World Health Organisation (WHO) chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said that the number of people who have received a Covid-19 vaccination now exceeds those reportedly infected, warning that after inoculating their own health workers and older people, countries must share doses with others, to eradicate the deadly coronavirus.

“In one sense, that’s good news, and a remarkable achievement in such a short timeframe”, Tedros told journalists at a regular press briefing in Geneva. However, he noted that “more than three quarters of those vaccinations are in just 10 countries that account for almost 60 percent of global GDP”. This amounts to 130 countries, with 2.5 billion people, that have yet to administer a single dose.

Against the backdrop that some countries have even vaccinated some lower-risk populations, Tedros recognized that while all governments have an obligation to protect their own people, after inoculating their health workers and older people, “the best way to protect the rest of their own population is to share vaccines so other countries can do the same”.

“Unless we suppress the virus everywhere, we could end up back at square one”, cautioned the WHO chief.

Drawing attention to French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi’s announcement last week to make its manufacturing infrastructure available to produce the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, he called on other companies to follow their example.?

“Companies can also issue non-exclusive licenses to allow other producers to manufacture their vaccine – a mechanism that has been used before to expand access to treatments for HIV and hepatitis C”, said the WHO chief.