Several staffers of Accountability Court No 2 of Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) contracted Covid-19, prompting fears that there may be a delay in the accountability cases, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Thursday.

The hearing of National Accountability Bureau (NAB) cases are feared to come to a halt amid the new situation surfaced at Accountability Court No 2 where court’s assistant clerk Tariq Mehmood has been tested positive with coronavirus.

Many other witnesses have also been tested positive of coronavirus including NAB witness Christopher Stephen, the TV channel reported.

Christopher Stephen is a NAB witness in a mega-money laundering case, the TV channel reported.

Wednesday proved to be the deadliest day for Pakistan in over three months as 26 people died of the coronavirus, raising the death toll in the country to 6,893, showed the figures released by National Command and Operation Centre on Thursday morning.

Eight of these latest deaths were reported in Sindh with five each more dying in Punjab, Azad Kashmir and Islamabad. It also means that the last 24 hours were the worst for Azad Kashmir as the region recorded the highest number of daily deaths since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

Similarly, the alarming rise in cases continued as another 1,302 people tested positive for the virus on Wednesday. Hence, the overall number of coronavirus cases officially reported in the country has reached 338,875 amid the rise in positivity rate among the people.

The region-wise distribution of the coronavirus cases is given as: Sindh 147,787, Punjab 105,535, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 40,022, Islamabad 20,694, Balochistan 16,026, Azad Kashmir 4,491 and Gilgit-Baltistan 4,320.