Asad Umar warns of another spike in coronavirus cases in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar on Sunday warned of another spike in coronavirus case if proper precautionary measures are not adopted and said that the pandemic is far from over in the country, ARY NEWS reported.

Speaking during ARY NEWS programme, Sawal Ye Hai, he said that Pakistanis should not consider that threat from coronavirus is over and should adopt precautionary measures.

“We allowed prayers in the mosques that proved to be a better experiment,” he said adding that more SOPS were followed in the mosques than the shopping centres.

“We will devise SOPs for the month of Muharrum and will determine the coronavirus numbers after it to devise a future course of action,” Asad Umar said.

Terming the government strategy against coronavirus a success, the federal minister said that smart lockdown and coronavirus tracing model proved successful in tackling the infection in the country. “It helped us in tracing the contacts of the coronavirus patients and isolating them to avoid the spread of the virus,” he said.

He said that the prime minister was of the opinion from the very first day that the country could only move forward with keeping in view both, health measures and economy, at a time.

It is pertinent to mention here that the country has witnessed a sharp decline in coronavirus after a spike in June this year.

As per the latest figures, a total of 634 new coronavirus cases and eight associated deaths were reported across the country over the last 24 hours, taking the national tally of infections to 284,121 and fatalities to 6,082.

According to the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), as many as 23,390 samples were tested for Covid-19 during the previous 24 hours, out of which 634 turned out to be positive.

Of the total Covid-19 patients, 260,248 have recuperated from the disease so far as the number of active cases stands at 17,791. Out of the 1,859 ventilators earmarked for critically-ill patients, only 153 are occupied.

More than 2.1 million tests have been carried out across the country thus far, leading to the emergence of 284,121 positive cases.