Pakistan has reported 1,772 more cases of novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours bringing the national tally of confirmed cases to 524,783.
With 48 more deaths reported in a single day, the country’s national death tally has hit 11,103.
As many as 2,046 more people recovered from the dread virus taking the recovery toll to 478,517.
The active cases toll now stands at 35,163.
Prime Minister Imran Khan has also directed to speed up measures for procurement and supply of the approved coronavirus vaccines in the country.
He was presiding over a meeting of the committee constituted for procurement of coronavirus vaccine in Islamabad.
The Prime Minister was informed that measures have been taken for procurement of two approved COVID-19 vaccines and its supply will be ensured in the first quarter of current year.
He was also informed that approval has been given for emergency use of two vaccines during the last few days while measures are being fast-tracked for approval of more vaccines.
It should be noted that the December 2020 saw a total of 81,696 cases while November and October’s infection tally stood at 66,512 and 21,164.
The uptick comes as authorities approved two anti-coronavirus vaccine for emergency use across the country – the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine with 70.4% efficacy and China’s Sinopharm vaccine with an efficacy of 79%.
With the approval by Drug Regulatory Authority Pakistan (DRAP), the federal and provincial governments as well as the private sector is free to import the vaccines and administer it.
Pakistan has one of the highest recovery rates in the world as 91.1% (or 476,471) of all COVID-19 patients have made a full recovery. In the past 24 hours, the country saw 1,243 testing negative for the virus.
