–NCOC confirms 1,895 fresh infections, 39 fatalities in a day
ISLAMABAD: The National Institute of Health (NIH) has confirmed the presence of the B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant amongst two individuals who had visited the United Kingdom.
The B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant was confirmed via whole-genome sequencing following preliminary reports of the prevalence of the virus in some travellers.
Since the emergence of the new coronavirus variant in the UK, which was reported during December 2020, the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination has required all inbound passengers from the UK to be tested for SARS-CoV-2 on arrival.
It is also of note that the variant virus reported in the UK has also been detected in 31 other countries so far. The preliminary epidemiologic and clinical findings suggest that the B.1.1.7 variant virus may have higher transmissibility but without any evidence of increased severity of illness.
The first cases of the UK variant were confirmed in Sindh on December 29. The Sindh government confirmed the cases in Karachi among passengers who had returned from Britain in the last 12 days, as the authorities launched a gigantic exercise to trace the patients’ contacts.
Meanwhile, as many as 1,895 new cases of the coronavirus were reported across the country during the last 24 hours, lifting the national tally of infections to 488,529.
According to the data released by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), 39 more people died during this period, taking the death toll from the highly contagious disease to 10,350.
A total of 30,139 samples were tested, out of which 1,895 turned out to be positive. The national positivity ratio of infections was recorded at 6.28 per cent. There are a total of 35,722 active cases of the coronavirus while the number of recovered patients stands at 442,457. Around 2,242 of the Covid-19 patients under treatment are said to be in critical condition.
So far Sindh has reported 218,597 infections, Punjab, 140,714, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), 59,484, Balochistan, 18,247, Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), 38,263, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), 8,357, and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) has reported 4,867 cases.
