Pakistan is at risk from Covid's Delta variant, warns Asad Umar

(Karachi) Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar has said that the Covid's Delta variant is rapidly spreading in the South Asian region and Pakistan is at risk from this disaster.

Addressing a media briefing on Friday, Umar said the new strain is spreading at a fast pace and it has now become extremely important for people to get vaccinated against the virus as soon as possible.

"For the last four days, Pakistan has been immunising over 500,000 people every day, which is a record. The number is still low because we have a capacity of inoculating more people," he stated.

35 Delta variant cases reported in Karachi

The minister maintained that people vaccinated against the coronavirus have a 7.5 times less chance of contracting the Delta variant as compared to the unvaccinated ones. “Even those who have been administered the first dose of the vaccine are at four times less risk of getting infected,” he pointed out.

He highlighted that there have been cases where people have tested positive for the virus, but their symptoms have been mild.

He said that 20 million people across the country have been vaccinated so far. “There are still 125 million people above the age of 18 years who are yet to be inoculated.”

The country's coronavirus positivity ratio soared to 6.1% on Friday, the highest since May 21 when it stood at 6.43%.

In a first, Pakistan administers more than 500,000 Covid-19 vaccines in a day

The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) data shows that 37,690 people were tested for the virus across the country during the last 24 hours. Of these 2,327 came out positive, taking the national tally to 983,719.

Thirty-one more people succumbed to the novel Covid-19, taking the total number of fatalities to 22,720. Overall, there are 2,388 critical cases and 43,670 active Covid-19 cases in Pakistan.

During the last 24 hours, Sindh reported 1,466 new cases and 25 deaths, Punjab recorded 364 infections and 4 deaths, Balochistan confirmed 116 cases and 1 death, while Khyber Pakhtunkhwa reported no cases and deaths.