Rise in Covid-19 fatalities in Pakistan

ISLAMABAD: Tests carried out on at least 10 people in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province after their deaths have shown that they died due to infection by the novel coronavirus, government officials said as the total number of infected persons in the country climbed to 8,650, with 182 deaths.


"KP has tested suspected patients of Covid-19 after they passed away to confirm their diagnosis. At least 10 deaths in the province have been confirmed through this," tweeted Zain Raza, the province’s focal person on Covid-19. "The samples were taken from the patients after they passed away because they arrived at hospitals very late," he added.

So far, Covid-19 has killed 67 people in KP. With only 1,235 confirmed cases there, the percentage of deaths in the northwestern province is higher than in the other provinces.

Amid rising concerns that the government is not testing the bodies of the elderly which arrive at hospitals, thereby potentially ignoring the possibility that they might have contracted Covid-19, PM Imran Khan’s top aide on health,

Dr Zafar Mirza

, said a probe was underway to determine the exact nature of the deaths.

Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, has the highest number of infected patients — 3,721 on Monday — and 42 deaths. At least 1,531 of them are members of the Tablighi Jamaat. Punjab also has 94 prisoners who have tested positive.

The southern province of Sindh, where the country’s first coronavirus cases had surfaced in February, has currently 2,767 confirmed cases. The death toll in Sindh has risen to 61.

Balochistan, the country’s largest but least populated province, has reported 56 new cases over the past 24 hours, raising the tally to 432.

Islamabad has reported 181 cases, with 3 deaths. Meanwhile, in Gilgit-Baltistan, infections rose to 263, with three deaths. In Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, confirmed Covid-19 cases rose to 49 but no death has as yet been reported from the region.