Islamabad records highest surge with 366 new COVID-19 cases in 3 months

ISLAMABAD, January 16: Continuing with the alarming rise, the federal capital had reported 366 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, which was the highest single-day spike in almost the last three months, National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) said on Sunday. According to an official of NCOC, as many as 354 cases were reported on Saturday while 299 reported on Friday. He said so far 110,963 cases were reported from the federal capital while 969 deaths were reported from Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) while 107,969 patients had been recovered completely. Meanwhile, on the direction of the Ministry of National Health Services, the district administration of Islamabad had continued surveillance of different areas of the capital to reduce transmission of the infection. They also started taking action on a violation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) related to the Coronavirus while visiting marriage halls, markets, and petrol pumps by its inspection teams. The administration had been asked to take action on the violation of SOPs at shops, workshops, and restaurants. The inspection teams had been directed to issue notices to marriage halls besides imposing fines on owners of different shops in case of violation of SOPs. Commenting on the situation, an official of the Ministry of National Health Services said that several local-level administrative decisions were made to control the disease. He advised the citizens to continue following the social distancing, use of masks and other precautionary measures to stop increasing transmission of COVID-19 in the city. -DNA