ISLAMABAD: The deputy director of the emergency ward of the Pakistan Institute Of Medical Sciences (PIMS) died of coronavirus late Friday night.
Dr Manzoor Ahmad Khan had contracted the contagious disease in December and was on a ventilator for several days, a tweet said.
The nation is currently battling a second wave of the coronavirus and has reported over 516,000 infections and 10,908 deaths since the outbreak of the virus in February last.
In the last 24 hours, the government portal keeping track of the disease posted 2,432 new infections of the coronavirus after conducting 42,422 tests with a positivity ratio of 5.73 percent.
Over 13,000 health care workers had been infected with the virus and more than 100 had died so far, the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) last week said.
The NCOC said the highest number of coronavirus cases among health care workers was reported in Sindh, at 4,631.
Meanwhile, Dr Faisal Sultan, state minister for national health services, said the government has yet to finalise any orders for a coronavirus vaccine.
In separate interviews, he said that the government was striving to procure a vaccine that was effective and affordable. “We are hoping to have vaccines for frontline workers within the first quarter,” he said but cautioned that no date could be provided because the orders were still pending.
