Daily Covid death toll falls back to single digit

5 deaths mark the lowest death toll since January 23

ISLAMABAD:

The number of fatalities from the coronavirus pandemic fell to a single digit during the last 24 hours for the first time in five weeks, while the single day tally of fresh cases remained below 1,000, according to the daily update issued by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC).

The NCOC, which serves as the nerve centre of the government unified effort against the pandemic, reported 856 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, marking a second straight day of less than 1,000 infections. It added that 5 people breathed their last during that period.

The fatalities, two each in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Islamabad and one in Punjab, is the lowest death toll since January 23. However, the forum said that the national positivity ratio rose slightly to 2.5%, compared to 2.1% a day earlier.

Read: Hong Kong mortuaries fill up as COVID deaths climb

Also during the last 24 hours, 1,756 coronavirus patients recovered from the pandemic, reducing the number of active cases to 35,898. According to the forum, they included 1,052 people admitted to various Covid-dedicated facilities across the country.

Covid-19 emerged in China's Wuhan city in December 2019 and spread worldwide. The World Health Organization (WHO declared it a pandemic on March 11, 2020, which had infected more than 435.2 million globally, with 5.9 million fatalities.

In Pakistan, the first case of coronavirus was detected on February 26, 2020. As of Monday, according to the NCOC, the country’s caseload of the disease rose to 1,509,360. Among them 1,443,284 people had fully recovered, while 30,178 people succumbed to the deadly contagion.