Pakistan has reported another 578 coronavirus infections and two deaths during the last 24 hours (Wednesday), showed the statistics released by the National Institute of Health Pakistan on Thursday morning, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.

As per the NIH data, the death toll in the country now surged to 30,544 after adding the two new fatalities while the number of total infections now stood at 1,564,809 after adding the fresh 578 cases.

During the last 24 hours (Wednesday), 22,679 tests were conducted throughout Pakistan whereas the positivity ratio stood at 2.55 percent. The number of patients in critical care was recorded at 159.

https://twitter.com/NIH_Pakistan/status/1560081108640960515

During the last 24 hours (Wednesday), another 371 patients have recovered from the Covid-19 in Pakistan and the number of total recoveries now stood at 1,524,746. As of Thursday, the total count of active cases in the country was recorded at 9,519.

As many as 592,654 coronavirus cases have so far been confirmed in Sindh, 518,993 in Punjab, 222,650 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 138,560 in Islamabad, 35,905 in Balochistan, 44,071 in Azad Kashmir and 11,976 in Gilgit-Baltistan.

As many as 13,595 individuals have lost their lives to the pandemic in Punjab so far, 8,217 in Sindh, 6,340 in KP, 1,030 in Islamabad, 793 in Azad Kashmir, 378 in Balochistan and 191 in Gilgit Baltistan.

India reports over 12,000 new Covid cases, 36 deaths

India reported a total of 9,062 new Covid-19 infections in the last 24 hours. The active caseload stands at 1,05,058, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare informed.

The country also reported 36 deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of Covid-related fatalities to 5,27,134.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 4,36,54,064.

The daily positivity rate was 2.49 percent while the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 4.38 percent, according to the health ministry.

Covid can impair brain function, large study suggests

Patients recovering from coronavirus infection suffer from increased rates of neurological and psychological problems, according to a wide-ranging observational study published Thursday.

Researchers from Oxford University combed through more than a million patient files and discovered that, two years after infection, patients who had recovered from COVID-19 were at a higher risk of psychosis, dementia and "brain fog" when compared with patients who recovered from other respiratory diseases.

For some symptoms, there was an initial uptick that leveled off. Anxiety and depression fell to rates in line with other respiratory diseases after two months. But, in the case of brain fog, for example, adults aged between 18 and 64 who had recovered from COVID-19 suffered from it at a rate 16 percent higher than patients with other respiratory diseases. The difference was more marked in those aged over 65, where increased risk was also found for psychosis and dementia.

The data, mainly from patients in the U.S., shows that minors are also affected. Children getting over COVID-19 were twice as likely to suffer from epilepsy or a seizure, and three times as likely to develop a psychotic disorder compared with those recovering from a respiratory disease, even as the absolute risk of the conditions remains low.

The study, in The Lancet Psychiatry, showed that even the milder Omicron variant of the coronavirus that is currently dominant posed similar long-term risks.

Maxime Taquet, one of the study authors, noted that only patients who were sick enough to enter the health system and receive a COVID-19 diagnosis were included in the study, which undercounts those with only mild symptoms. However, the same holds for the comparison group of patients recovered from other respiratory illnesses.

The study sought "to pull out what COVID, as the virus, does to you specifically, versus what other viruses affecting the same part of your body in a generally similar fashion might be doing," said its lead author Paul Harrison. He added that the study was not designed to identify the biological mechanism by which the virus causes the increased risk of psychological and neurological disorder.

The paper adds to the growing body of evidence pointing to the long-lasting damage caused by the coronavirus. The issue has become a concern for governments, which are spending money to research and to treat the cluster of symptoms informally known as "long COVID," a label that includes both neurological problems as well as fatigue and shortness of breath.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation estimates that 3.7 percent of COVID-19 patients develop a post-COVID symptom, said Janet Diaz, the WHO's lead on the topic. Speaking at a conference on Wednesday, she said that the average severity of post-COVID conditions are equivalent to those experienced by patients with severe neck pain, Crohn's disease or the long-term consequences of traumatic brain injury.