Lahore/Quetta/Karachi/Peshawar (Staff Report/Agencies): The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Pakistan on Thursday rose to 160, 118 after 5,358 new infections were reported over the past 24 hours.
Overall, 60,138 cases were reported in Punjab, 59,983 in Sindh, 19,613 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 8,794 in Balochistan, 9,637 in Islamabad, 1,213 in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and 740 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).
According to the government's Covid-19 portal, the death toll related to coronavirus has reached 3,093 with 118 fatalities reported during the last 24 hours while around 59,215 patients have fully recovered from the disease.
Nearly one-and-a-half months after imposing the lockdown across the country, the government announced to ease the lockdown in phases, however, the number of coronavirus cases has continued to soar.
Meanwhile, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on National Health Services Dr Zafar Mirza on Thursday chaired a meeting to strengthen the testing capacity and developing a unified testing fee for the coronavirus tests, the National Institute of Health (NIH) stated.
According to the NIH, representatives from the public and private sector laboratories attended the meeting.
Separately, Dr Zafar Mirza has said that says there is no effective treatment for coronavirus in the world so far.
He said that the recent research shows that one third of severely affected patients can survive by using medicine, Dexamethasone.
However, he said that this medicine can only be used for critical patients and urged the people not to use it without doctor's advice.
The SAPM urged the people to follow Standards Operating Procedures (SOPs) to curb the spread of novel coronavirus.
It is pertinent to mention that the global coronavirus cases have reportedly surpassed 8.3 million and death toll tops 450,000.
