Pakistan records 1,757 new Covid-19 cases

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan reported 1,757 new Covid-19 cases over the past 24 hours, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) said Monday.

The overall tally of the infected people climbed to 1,240,425 in the country, the department leading Pakistan’s campaign against the pandemic said.

Sindh province has been the worst hit, with a total of 455,808 cases, followed by Punjab, where the virus was detected in 429,081 people.

A total of 27,597 people died from the virus in Pakistan, with 31 new deaths, the NCOC said.

The country currently has 50,651 active cases, while 1,162,177 others have recovered. Last year, World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had praised Pakistan’s response to the coronavirus, saying the country managed to fight the pandemic while allowing its economy to pick up as the country stabilises.

In an op-ed in the British online newspaper The Independent, Tedros noted that Pakistan had deployed the infrastructure built over many years for polio to combat Covid-19.

“Community health workers who have been trained to go door-to-door vaccinating children against polio have been redeployed and utilised for surveillance, contact tracing and care,” he wrote.

He said the strategy had “suppressed the virus so that, as the country stabilises, the economy is also now picking up, once again”.