Islamabad (Web Desk): The Ministry of National Health Services has warned that Pakistan may face the fifth wave of COVID-19 in February 2022 as the country is facing the arrival of Omicron variant of the virus.
As per the reports, the officials related to the ministry have warned of daily detection of around 3,000-4,000 cases per day especially in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad where citizens were found infected with the new variant.
The National Institute of Health (NIH) also confirmed on Tuesday that so far 75 cases of the Omicron variant were confirmed in Pakistan, including 33 in Karachi where the first case was reported on December 13 while 17 cases of the Omicron variant have been reported from Islamabad and 13 in Lahore.
The NIH officials further said that the Omicron variant cases were ‘asymptomatic’, which shows that the new variant could be spreading silently in metropolises where only a few labs had the capacity to pick the suspected cases.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Wednesday warned that Omicron still poses a “very high” risk and could overwhelm healthcare systems as the highly transmissible COVID-19 variant fuelled record outbreaks in many countries.
On the other hand, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Pakistan rose to 1,294,379 on Wednesday after 348 new cases surfaced in the country during the last 24 hours.
As per the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) data, 39,739 tests were conducted in last 24 hours while positivity ratio remained 0.87%.
According to the government's COVID-19 portal, the death toll related to coronavirus has reached to 28,918 with 6 fatalities reported during the last 24 hours.
Over the last twenty four hours, total number of recovered COVID-19 patients across the country reached 1,255,396 after another 192 virus recoveries were reported.
