The number of dengue fever cases kept growing in Pakistan amid an outbreak due to floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains.
The southern Sindh province reported 295 new infections, said the provincial health department on Monday evening. The worst-hit area was Karachi, the provincial capital, which reported 209 new cases. With the newly reported dengue cases, the October figure to date for the province has risen to 5,513, bringing the local total to 15,667 this year.
In the last 24 hours, 221 more people were diagnosed with the mosquito-borne disease in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the provincial health department reported on Monday evening. The number of active cases in the province currently stands at 1,874 and the total number of cases this year has reached 14,521.
The eastern Punjab province reported 159 new cases in the last 24 hours, the provincial health authorities said on Monday. Punjab’s capital Lahore reported 50 new cases, followed by its Gujranwala city with 38 cases. The total number of dengue cases in Punjab this year has now gone up to 11,245.
The national capital Islamabad reported 50 new dengue cases in the last 24 hours, the health authorities said on Monday night. The city’s total tally has risen to 3,864 this year.
Meanwhile, death toll from this season’s monsoon rain and floods since mid-June has risen to 1,719 along with 12,867 injuries in Pakistan.
According to a report, 641 children and 345 women were among those who lost their lives in separate rain or flood-related incidents in the South Asian country.
The southern Sindh province was the worst-hit region, where 780 people were killed, followed by the southwestern Balochistan province with 336 deaths, while the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the eastern Punjab provinces reported 308 and 223 deaths, respectively.
