LAHORE: The Punjab province has witnessed a sudden increase in the number of Covid-19 new cases after Eidul Azha.

The everyday cases which had dropped to [on average] below 100 during the last one week, again increased to around 300.

Though, some medical experts were not perturbed and declared it a routine surge, others believed that it might be a signal for the beginning of the second wave of virus. Punjab reported 277 new confirmed cases of Covid-19 besides five deaths during the last 24 hours against 235 a day earlier.

Of the new cases, 100 were reported from Lahore against 52 a day before, 58 from Rawalpindi (54), 25 from Gujranwala, 13 from Multan (11 a day earlier), 11 from Sialkot, eight from Gujrat etc.

According to official figures released by the health department on Thursday, the total number of the confirmed cases in Punjab reached 93,847 including 47,729 in Lahore, 7,503 in Rawalpindi, 5,856 in Multan and 5,812 in Faisalabad.

The Punjab government performed 5,424 Covid-19 tests during the last 24 hours across the province. Of them most were conducted by the private labs.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2020