Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar has warned that Pakistan is witnesses ‘clear signs of fourth COVID-19 wave’.
The NCOC chief took to social media to announce that the country is experiencing clear signs of a fourth COVID-19 wave.
Now there are clear early signs of fourth (COVID-19) wave starting. Poor sop compliance, coupled with spread of variants of concern, Indian variant in particular, are the main cause, tweeted Asad Umar.
The federal minister highlighted that field reports are showing complete disregard of the condition of vaccination for those attending indoor weddings and going to indoor restaurants and gyms.
Asad Umar also warned that if the owners of these facilities do not show responsibility fail to ensure compliance, there will be no choice but to shut them down.
Prior to this, Asad Umar had denied the possibility of a complete lockdown in case of a fourth COVID-19 wave in the country.
Ruling out the implementation of a complete lockdown, Asad Umar noted that the government might consider imposing smart lockdowns in areas where cases are increasing.
The development comes as Pakistan’s COVID-19 positivity rate has surpassed 3% mark.
A total of 47,528 COVID-19 tests were conducted in the past 24 hours of which 1,737 came back positive taking the nation’s COVID-19 positivity rate to 3.65%.
A total of 25 people succumbed to the novel virus during this time period.
As per the NCOC statistics, Pakistan’s total COVID-19 tally stands at 969,476 cases with 22,250 deaths so far. A total of 911,383 people have successfully recovered from COVID-19 whereas 1,971 are still in critical condition.
