All the readings into the coronavirus pandemic in Pakistan are indicating that the Covid-19 is receding slowly but surely and the day is not far when it would completely be wiped out from the country.

To add to it, Pakistan has recorded a heavy drop in the number of coronavirus infections during the last 24 hours (Friday) which was 76 with no death reported while the positivity ratio also took a deep plunge with number of active cases crashing down to below 6,000, showed the statistics released by the National Institute of Health Pakistan on Saturday morning.

As per the latest NIH data, there was no change in the death toll as compared to the previous day which was 30,363, whereas the number of total infections now stood at 1,527,151 after adding the fresh 76 cases.

During the last 24 hours (Friday), 25,363 tests were conducted throughout Pakistan whereas the positivity ratio crashed to 0.30 percent. The number of patients in critical care was 211.

https://twitter.com/NIH_Pakistan/status/1515132878438424577

During the last 24 hours (Friday), as many as 3,893 patients have recovered from the virus whereas the total recoveries stood at 1,490,947. As of Saturday, the total count of active cases in the country was recorded at 5,841.

As many as 576,517 coronavirus cases have so far been confirmed in Sindh, 505,614 in Punjab, 219,362 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 135,148 in Islamabad, 35,483 in Balochistan, 43,304 in Azad Kashmir and 11,723 in Gilgit-Baltistan.

As many as 13,559 individuals have lost their lives to the pandemic in Punjab so far, 8,098 in Sindh, 6,322 in KP, 1,023 in Islamabad, 792 in Azad Kashmir, 378 in Balochistan and 191 in Gilgit Baltistan.

Covid cases on the rise again in US

Yet again, the US is trudging into what could be another Covid-19 surge, with cases rising nationally and in most states after a two-month decline.

One big unknown? “We don’t know how high that mountain’s gonna grow,” said Dr Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University.

No one expects a peak nearly as high as the last one, when the contagious Omicron version of the coronavirus ripped through the population.

But experts warn that the coming wave – caused by a mutant called BA.2 that’s thought to be about 30 percent more contagious – will wash across the nation and push up hospitalizations in a growing number of states in the coming weeks. And the case wave will be bigger than it looks, they say, because reported numbers are vast undercounts as more people test at home without reporting their infections or skip testing altogether.

At the height of the previous Omicron surge, reported daily cases reached into the hundreds of thousands. On April 14, the seven-day rolling average for daily new cases rose to 39,521, up from 30,724 two weeks earlier, according to data from Johns Hopkins collected by The Associated Press.

India records 975 new Covid cases

India on Saturday recorded 975 new Covid-19 cases, bringing the total number of coronavirus infections to 4,30,40,947. According to the Health Ministry, the country also reported four Covid-related deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of fatalities to 5,21,747.

The number of active cases of Covid-19 currently stands at 11,366 in India.

The active cases account for 0.03 percent of the total caseload, while the national Covid-19 recovery rate remained at 98.76 percent.

796 recoveries in the last 24 hours increases the total recoveries to 4,25,07,834.

The daily positivity rate was recorded at 0.32 percent and the weekly positivity rate was 0.26 percent, according to the ministry.