Pakistan
‘Tough decisions’ coming if Covid situation doesn’t improve, warns Asad as pandemic rages across country
Islamabad: With daily coronavirus cases continuing to scale new peaks in Pakistan, Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar has warned that government will be forced to take tough decisions if coronavirus situation in the country doesn’t improve.
While briefing media over the situation of coronavirus at National Command and Operations Center (NCOC), the federal minister said that the third wave of Covid-19 is deadlier and more contagious.
“People are not aware of the fact how dangerous is this third wave of coronavirus. The new UK variant spreads faster and is more contagious. Most of the patients are reported Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhawa (KP) and Islamabad,” he said.
Asad Umar said that hospitals are already strained under influx of patients.
“Everyday huge number of patients is showing up in hospitals. We are receiving messages that there is shortage of beds in hospitals. In the first and second waves, there was a maximum of 3300 and 2011 critical patients respectively. On the other hand, more than 1000 critical patients have been reported in last 12 days only. If cases continue to surge like this we will be forced to take tougher decisions,” he added.
The federal minister further stated that coronavirus has spread in the whole region including India and Bangladesh
“Now is the time to spread the curb of disease. The number of infections rose as people didn’t follow precautionary measures,” he added.
Pakistan has reported highest single-day increase in Covid-19 cases for second consecutive days as the third wave of the pandemic continued to rage across the country.
According to National Command and Operations Center (NCOC), around 4,468 cases of coronavirus were reported while 67 people succumbed to the disease in the last 24 hours, taking the total death toll to 14,158.
The total number of confirmed cases reached to 649,824.
As many as 593,282 patients have recovered from the disease with 2,842 critical cases.