Pakistan passed yet another unfortunate milestone as the number of the coronavirus cases crossed 80,000 with the past 24 hours [Tuesday] being the worst in terms of identifying new infected people.

The period saw 4,131 new cases, raising the overall number to 80,463, which means the daily records were broken on two consecutive days. Previously, the highest number of cases recorded in a day was 3,938 that came on Monday.

Meanwhile, 67 more deaths were also reported in the country after which the death toll has now climbed to 1,688.

Most of these latest deaths were again reported in Punjab where 30 people died of the coronavirus. It means the virus has so far claimed 570 lives in the province, making it worst-hit region in terms of deaths.

The rise in the number of deaths recorded daily in Punjab corresponds with a warning issued by the Health Department which had told the provincial government that Lahore had become the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic, where the number of infected people was estimated to be around 670,000. But the Punjab government rejected the summary along with the proposal that four-week-long complete lockdown should be imposed in the province.

On the other hand, the death toll in case of Sindh currently stands at 526 after recording another 23 deaths during the past 24 hours. The details of the remaining deaths are: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 490, Balochistan 49, Islamabad 34, Gilgit-Baltistan 12 and Azad Kashmir seven.

As far testing is concerned, another 17,370 people were tested for the virus in different parts of the country, which raised the number of tests carried out since the coronavirus pandemic outbreak to 595,344.

The province-wise distribution of the reported cases is: 31,086 in Sindh, 29,489 in Punjab, 10,897 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 4,740 in Balochistan, 3,188 in Islamabad, 779 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 284 in Azad Kashmir.   

Meanwhile, there are 49,852 active cases currently in the country while 29,923 patients have so far fully recovered from the infection.