Islamabad: Prime Minister Imran Khan is scheduled to visit Haripur today (Monday) to perform the groundbreaking of Pakistan Digital City Special Technology Zone project, the country’s first such venture.

The prime minister will be accompanied by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, federal and provincial ministers.

The Pakistan Digital City project will be completed at a cost of Rs1.31 billion and scattered over 86 kanals of land.

Pakistan Digital City Haripur is a flagship project of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government being launched to provide all facilities to the IT industry in one place.

The project aims to serve as a state-of-the-art facility to enable collaborations and innovation amongst academia, research, industry and planners from within country and abroad.

It will benefit other allied industries like electronics, software houses, mobile phone industry, technology incubators, and computer industry in the province.

Last month, Prime Minister Imran Khan had inaugurated Lahore Technopolis, a special technology zone, to create jobs and boost Pakistan’s tech exports.

Karachi: The Sindh government has announced to deduct one day salary of all government officials and employees who do not wear a face mask on Sunday.

According to the details, the Sindh government directed authorities to deduct one day's salary of all government officials and employees who do not wear a face mask. The directives have been issued in view of the rising cases of COVID-19 in the province.

A day earlier, a meeting of the provincial coronavirus task force was chaired by Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah at the CM House during which the Shah stated that officials who do not wear masks will face a fine.

It was proposed that one day's wage be deducted from the pay of any government employee who does not wear a mask in the workplace.

Meanwhile, Pakistan witnessed an enormous spike in its daily tally of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) after as many as 4,027 new infections were logged in the last 24 hours, according to morning update by ministry of health.

The country’s positivity rate now stands at 7.8% when 4,027 fresh cases were reported. The cumulative tally of the country has now climbed to 1,324,147.

As the fifth wave of COVID-19 intensifies in Pakistan reported 4,027 new coronavirus infections, a new daily record, with authorities linking the spike with the Omicron variant of virus.  

According to the latest figures issued by the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), 3,567 persons were tested positive while 7 died in the past 24 hours— taking Pakistan's COVID death toll to 29,012.   

As many as 1,263,584 patients have recovered from the disease. 

Punjab

The number of patients swelled to 452,261 in the province with 13,088 causalities.

Sindh

The number of infections has surged to 499,830 in the province, while the death toll has reached 7,694.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

The confirmed cases have surged to 182,199 in the province with 5,958 casualties.

Balochistan

There are 33,699 confirmed cases while 367 patients have died from the infection so far.

AJK and Gilgit-Baltistan

There are 34,750 coronavirus cases in the AJK while the death toll has reached 749. On the other hand, there are 10,445 cases in GB with 187 coronavirus deaths.

Islamabad

There are 110,963 cases in the capital city while 969 people have lost their lives.  

Doha: A three-week-old baby has died from COVID-19 in Qatar, the health ministry said on Sunday, reporting a rare child fatality from the illness in the Gulf country.

"A three-week-old baby has sadly died as a result of severe infection from COVID-19," the emirate's public health ministry said in a statement.

"The baby had no other known medical or hereditary conditions", and was the second child to have died in the country since the pandemic began, it added.

Child deaths from COVID-19 are infrequent but health authorities in several countries have registered a rise in childhood infections since the spread of the Omicron variant.

The Qatari ministry said youngsters have generally been less at risk of severe COVID infection than older people, but that "a greater number of children are being infected in this current wave and needing medical care than in previous waves".

Gas-rich Qatar has officially recorded almost 300,000 cases of coronavirus and around 600 deaths, from 2.6 million residents.

Cases have surged in recent weeks, and in late December Qatar's main health care provider suspended leave for all medical and administrative staff dealing with COVID-19 cases.

SOURCE: AFP