87pc decrease in Covid-19 deaths, says SAPM Mirza

Pakistan has successfully reduced the rate of Covid-19 transmission rate in the country pushing it one of the lowest in the world. 

The situation, that looked extremely bleak a few months ago, has improved exponentially over the last few weeks as the country’s number of cases reported each day has fallen below the 2,000 mark. More surprising however has been the reduction in the number of deaths reported. 

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Health Services Dr. Zafar Mirza said that the number of Covid-19 deaths in the country has fallen by nearly 87pc over the last few weeks.

Sharing the progress in mitigating the virus on Twitter, Mirza said “Today, Alhamdolilah, we have the lowest number of deaths in Pakistan due to COVID-19 in the last three months. We had a peak of 153 deaths on 20 June and in the last 24 hours we had 20. This is an 87 percent reduction in COVID-19 related deaths. Yet no place for any complacency!” 

In the last 24 hours, Pakistan has reported 1,176 new Covid-19 positive cases with around 3,529 recoveries. Meanwhile, the official statistics showed only 20 deaths. 

As of now, the country has reported a total of 274,802 cases with 5,853 deaths with around 241,026 successfully recovering from the virus. 

Of the provinces, Sindh continues to lead the tally accounting for nearly 45pc of the country’s total cases at 118,824 followed by Punjab at 92,073 cases. 

On the other hand, SAPM Mirza also said cases could spike again if people did not follow standard operating procedures while celebrating Eid over the weekend. 

“We saw this in Spain, Iran, the United States and other European countries that there can be a resurgence in cases,” Mirza said while sharing the lessons learned from other countries. 

“During the last few weeks, we discussed standard operating procedures (SOPs) with provinces and adopted a strategy at the national level,” he said while advising the public to “wear a mask, maintain social distancing and wash your hands frequently.”