Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM), Dr Faisal Sultan has urged people to get both doses of coronavirus vaccination as partially vaccinated people are at higher risk of contracting the disease.
SAPM Faisal said, “Our data suggests that the risk of contracting COVID-19 for PARTIALLY vaccinated persons is 3X higher compared to FULLY vaccinated individuals”. Vaccine will provide maximum protection after the second dose, he added.
In a separate statement, the special assistance has warned COVID-19 patients from taking antibacterial medications, especially Azithromycin, saying that it has no role in treating the viral infection.
Aside from Faisal Sultan, other health experts have also raised the alarm saying that some antibiotics and corticosteroids, including prednisone and dexamethasone, were increasingly used in the country during the last one year, mostly due to self-medication and over-the-counter availability. But the experts warned that misuse of these medicines can lead to serious health issues, which include diluting the antimicrobial resistance (AMR), leading to the emergence of lethal fungal infections like mucormycosis or black fungus.
Dr Sultan also criticized the fact that some specialists are even prescribing medicines that don’t have a scientific basis or a globally accepted guideline to support usage. With 3669 new infections in the last 24 hours, the covid-19 case tally in Pakistan has crossed 1.1 million on Monday.
The active cases in the country have now reached 88,588. Around 53,644 tests were conducted in Pakistan during the said time period, and the positivity ratio was recorded at 6.8 per cent.
Meanwhile, another 72 lost their lives to the virus in one day, taking the nationwide death toll to 24,478 in the country, as per latest figures shared by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC). In the last 24 hours, 2,218 patients have recovered from coronavirus, bringing the total number of recoveries to 989,013.
The breakdown of cases and deaths reported in last 24 hours is given below. Eight flights carrying more than 1,500 passengers have departed for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) after the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) made the facility of conducting Rapid PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test for covid-19 functional at all international airports of the country.
The UAE had on August 5, lifted the travel ban on transit passenger traffic from India, Pakistan, Nigeria and other countries. However, the travelers from these countries were still required to present negative coronavirus tests that were not carried out more than four hours before their departure.
Globally, the coronavirus caseload has crossed 207 million, while the deaths have surged to more than 4.36 million and vaccinations soared to over 4.58 billion, according to the Johns Hopkins University.
In the latest update by the University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE), the university reported that the current global caseload, death toll and vaccination tally stood at 207,137,460, 4,361,399 and 4,582,658,758, respectively.
The worse-hit country by the pandemic is the US with the world’s highest number of cases and deaths at 36,669,696 and 621,605, respectively, according to the CSSE. In terms of infections, India follows in the second place with 32,192,576 cases, while in terms of deaths, Brazil comes second with 569,058 fatalities.
The other worst countries with over 3 million cases are Brazil (20,364,099), Russia (6,511,431), France (6,471,262), the UK (6,297,157), Turkey (6,078,623), Argentina (5,084,635), Colombia (4,867,761), Spain (4,693,540), Italy (4,440,669), Iran (4,425,821), Indonesia (3,854,354), Germany (3,828,278) and Mexico (3,091,971), the CSSE figures showed.
