Lahore/Quetta/Karachi/Peshawar (Staff Report/Agencies): The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Pakistan rose to 479,715 on Thursday after 2,475 new coronavirus cases surfaced in the country during the last 24 hours.
Overall, 214,425 cases were confirmed in Sindh, 137,949 in Punjab, 58,379 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 18,148 in Balochistan, 37,556 in Islamabad, 4,856 in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and 8,256 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).
According to the government's COVID-19 portal, the death toll related to coronavirus has reached to 10,105 with 58 fatalities reported during the last 24 hours.
Over the last twenty four hours, total number of recovered COVID-19 patients across the country reached 435,073 after another 4,960 virus recoveries were reported.
Meanwhile, Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry on Thursday said that the government has decided to initially purchase 1.2 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from China.
In a tweet, he said vaccine doses to be purchased from Sinopharm company will be provided free of cost to frontline workers in the first quarter of 2021.
Fawad Chaudhry added that the private sector can also import the vaccine approved internationally.
Moreover, China has approved its first COVID-19 vaccine for general public use developed by state-backed pharmaceutical company Sinopharm.
President Xi Jinping has pledged to make China’s vaccines a global public good and it has won several large supply deals with countries including Indonesia and Brazil.
It is pertinent to mention that the global coronavirus cases have reportedly surpassed 80.8 million and death toll tops 1.7 million.
