59 die as highest single day virus deaths recorded since July

At least 2,665 more people test positive in last 24 hours

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan recorded the highest number of deaths in a single day due to coronavirus since July as 59 people lost their lives to the deadly contagion.

The total active Covid-19 cases in the country on Sunday were recorded at 36,683 after 2,665 more people tested positive for the virus during the last 24 hours, according to the latest update issued by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC).

On Saturday, a total of 59 coronavirus patients who were under treatment lost their lives, out of whom 54 died in hospitals, the NCOC said.

No virus patient was on ventilator in Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan, while 265 ventilators elsewhere in Pakistan were occupied, out of 1,803 allocated for Covid-19 patients.

Around 38,983 tests were conducted across the country on Saturday, including 11,537 in Sindh, 13,865 in Punjab, 4,836 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 7,098 in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), 697 in Balochistan, 313 in Gilgit Baltistan (G-B) and 637 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).

At least 329,828 people have so far recovered from the disease across the country.

Since the pandemic spread, a total of 374,173 cases have been reported, including 6,000 in AJK; 16,744 in Balochistan; 4,526 in G-B; 26,569 in ICT; 44,097 in KP; 114,010 in Punjab and 162,227 in Sindh.

Until Saturday, around 7,662 deaths were recorded in country since the eruption of the contagion, including 2,816 in Sindh; 2,848 in Punjab; 1,325 in KP; 278 in ICT; 161 in Balochistan; 94 in G-B and 140 in AJK.

At least 5,180,026 tests have been conducted until now, while 763 hospitals are equipped with Covid-19 facilities with 2,139 patients admitted across the country.

Moreover, the other day, the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (Drap) granted approval to ‘Cov-raid’, locally developed software capable of “detecting the novel coronavirus in a person’s lungs within a minute”. 
Cov-raid (Rapid Artificial Intelligence Detection), developed by the National Electronics Complex of Pakistan, requires a chest X-Ray image as an input for the detection of Covid-19.

“The local invention of Cov-raid is a major achievement,” DRAP CEO Dr Asim Rauf said on Saturday. “It will have a significant contribution,” he added.

The official said the technology was available in only a few countries in the world. “Pakistan will supply the Cov-raid to other countries too. It will soon be available in the entire country.”

The Cov-Raid has been registered under the DRAP Act 2012. It will “employ Convolutional Neural Networks” to diagnose Covid-19 in suspected individuals by using X-rays and it has been approved for “secondary detection” of the virus.

According to the Cov-Raid website, the artificial intelligence software has been developed by creating a data repository of chest X-rays for Covid-19 detection. (With input from APP)