The number of daily coronavirus infections has dropped to under 400 in Pakistan for the first time in many months along with the positivity ratio indicating that the fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic is about to end. 

According to the latest figures released by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) on Friday morning, Pakistan has registered another nine deaths and 391 infections from the coronavirus pandemic during the last 24 hours (Thursday). 

As per the NCOC data, after the addition of nine new deaths, the overall toll has now surged to 28,584 whereas the number of total infections now stood at 1,279,142 after adding the fresh 391 cases.

During the last 24 hours (Thursday), a total of 38,524 tests were conducted throughout Pakistan whereas the positivity ratio stood at 1.01 percent. The number of patients in critical care was 1,158.

https://twitter.com/OfficialNcoc/status/1458966026033504256

During the last 24 hours (Thursday), as many as 322 patients have recovered from the virus whereas the total recoveries stood at 1,227,228. As of Friday, the total count of active cases in the country was recorded at 23,330.

As many as 473,052 coronavirus cases have so far been confirmed in Sindh, 441,631 in Punjab, 178,926 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 107,249 in Islamabad, 33,383 in Balochistan, 34,501 in Azad Kashmir and 10,400 in Gilgit-Baltistan.

Moreover, 12,965 individuals have lost their lives to the pandemic in Punjab so far, 7,599 in Sindh, 5,786 in KP, 947 in Islamabad, 741 in Azad Kashmir, 358 in Balochistan and 186 in Gilgit Baltistan.

Indian Covid vaccine 'highly efficacious': study

Covaxin, the first Covid-19 vaccine developed in India, is "highly efficacious" and presents no safety concerns, according to a study published in the Lancet on Thursday.

Covaxin, developed by Bharat Biotech, gained emergency approval from the World Health Organization last week and has already been cleared for use in 17 countries.

The UN body has described it as "extremely suitable for low- and middle-income countries due to easy storage requirements".

Some of the other approved vaccines must be stored at very low temperatures, which throws up logistical and cost problems.

Covaxin "was highly efficacious against laboratory-confirmed symptomatic Covid-19 disease in adults," the report said.

The jab was also "well tolerated with no safety concerns raised in this interim analysis", it added.

The Indian-developed vaccine has a 78-percent efficacy rate after two doses over a month, according to the WHO.

It has joined the anti-Covid vaccines produced by Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca, Johnson&Johnson, Sinopharm and Sinovac on the WHO-approved list.

The roll-out of Covaxin can "increase the finite global manufacturing capacity, and improve insufficient supply of vaccines which disproportionately affects low-income and middle-income countries", said Chinese researchers Li Jingxin Li and Zhu Fengcai, who did not take part in the study.

They did however mention certain limits to the study, saying that as the trials had been conducted solely in India, there was a less ethnically diverse study group.

Also the studies were carried out between November 2020 and January 2021, before the more contagious Delta variant of the virus became widespread.

But despite the trial dates, the researchers involved were able to identify which of the patients were infected with the Delta variant. For this sub-group the study found that Covaxin still provided protection against Covid, but was slightly less effective.

With inputs from AFP.