COVID-19 claimed 19 more lives across the country during the past 24 hours, taking the death toll from the disease to 6,692.
According to the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), 660 fresh infections emerged during this period, lifting the national tally of cases to 324,744. As many as 26,670 new tests were conducted over the previous 24 hours.
There are a total of 9,378 active cases of the coronavirus as 308,674 patients have recovered from the virus.
Sindh has reported 142,348 cases so far, followed by Punjab that reported 101,936 cases while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported 38,779, Balochistan 15,717, Islamabad 18,309, Gilgit-Baltistan 4,091 and Azad Jammu and Kashmir 3,564.
In a special session, the NCOC hinted that drastic steps including the closure of all services will be taken to curb the spread of the virus as the public is not complying with the SOPs.
“NCOC is closely monitoring the situation. If there is no improvement in SOPs compliance, the NCOC will have no choice but to revert to strict measures leading to re-closures of services,” said the centre, in a statement.
Earlier, Minister for Planning and Development and Chairman NCOC Asad Umar had said that daily COVID-19 death rate witnessed a spike of 140 percent last week as compared to the mortality rate recorded a few weeks back.
