Pakistan has witnessed a slight increase in the Covid positivity ratio from 5.36% to 5.79% over the last 24 hours, with the country reporting less than 4,000 cases for the fourth consecutive day, according to the National Command and Operation Centre data published on Sunday.

In a tweet, the NCOC shared the daily Covid update. “Statistics 13 [of] Feb 22: total tests in last 24 hours: 55,304; positive cases: 3,206; positivity %: 5.79%; deaths: 41; patients on critical care: 1,623.”

The countrywide Covid tally showed that Sindh reported the maximum number of Covid cases, 557,931, followed by Punjab (494,971), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (209,758), Islamabad (133,037), Azad Jammu and Kashmir (41,862), Balochistan (35,056), and Gilgit Baltistan (11,183).

The NCOC, which serves as the centre of the country’s unified efforts to contain the spread of novel coronavirus, vaccine statistics showed that the country was near to meeting the 200 million vaccine administration mark. The government on February 1 started the first phase of a “massive” two-week-long door-to-door vaccination campaign countrywide to inoculate more than 35 million people as part of the country’s efforts to get ‘rid of the virus’ and return to normalcy.

“Vaccine statistics: vaccine administered across Pakistan in last 24 hours: 2,226,600. Total vaccine administered till now: 198,819,261. 40% of the total population and 60% of the eligible population stand vaccinated!” it read.

Officials on Friday told Prime Minister Imran Khan, who was presiding over a meeting to oversee measures to combat Covid, that cases of Covid’s variant Omicron were on a decline because of “strict enforcement” on the standard operating procedures across the country.

“The patients who are infected by Omicron and admitted in ICU are 71 per cent less than those patients who were in critical care in hospitals during the fourth wave of the Covid,” they said.

They added that at least 58 per cent population above the age of 12 years have been fully vaccinated against the virus. And it was expected that the above-mentioned percentage would rise to 72 per cent by March 2022.