80 more die in Pakistan due to Covid as positivity stands 7pc

ISLAMABAD: As the fourth Covid wave continues to mar the lives and livelihoods of Pakistanis, the daily statistics Monday report 80 deaths in the past 24-hour period across the country, ARY News reported.

Statistics 23 Aug 21:
Total Tests in Last 24 Hours: 53,881
Positive Cases: 3772
Positivity % : 7.0%
Deaths : 80

— NCOC (@OfficialNcoc) August 23, 2021

In its daily statistics report, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) released numbers that 53,881 people were tested in the past 24 hours. With 3,772 fresh infections reported in this period, the positivity stood at 7 per cent.

With new 80 deaths reported in this period, the total death toll of Covid in Pakistan now reaches 25,003, according to the NCOC.

COVID-19 patients were younger in early 2021 vs late 2020

Key to note the researchers at a large Pennsylvania health system found that the average hospitalized COVID-19 patient was younger this past spring than last winter.

They analyzed data from nearly 39,000 COVID-19 patients, including 7,774 who were hospitalized. People who tested positive in March and April 2021, when the Alpha variant of the coronavirus was circulating, were younger and less likely to die compared to those diagnosed between November 2020 and January 2021.

Among patients under 50, those who tested positive the spring were three times as likely to be hospitalized and twice as likely to require ICU admission or mechanical ventilation as those diagnosed in the winter before Alpha was widely circulating, according to a report posted on Wednesday on medRxiv ahead of peer review.

“The widespread availability of highly effective vaccines holds promise,” they said, “but infections and deaths from the disease continue…This dynamic is particularly concerning in light of the continued emergence of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants.”