Active COVID-19 case count exceeds 10,000-mark in Pakistan again

• Pakistan reports 599 COVID-19 cases in last 24 hours.
• Country's active coronavirus case count stands at 10,004.
• Three more people succumb to COVID-19 overnight.

The active COVID-19 case count in Pakistan has exceeded the 10,000 mark again as 599 more people got infected with the virus during the last 24 hours, National Institute of Health, Islamabad (NIH) data showed Thursday morning.

The last time the active case count grew past 10,000 was on July 16 when the number of cases stood at 10,003.

The new COVID-19 infections were detected after diagnostic testing on 21,315 samples, placing the country's active case count at 10,004 cases and the positivity rate at 2.81%.

Moreover, Pakistan's total number of COVID-19 cases climbed to 1,548,394.

Meanwhile, three patients suffering from coronavirus succumbed to the disease overnight, taking the country's COVID-19 death toll to 30,455, while 265 patients recovered.

However, 170 patients are still being treated in critical care units.

What is COVID BA.5 variant and why is it reinfecting so many people?

BA5, part of the Omicron family, is the latest coronavirus variant to cause widespread waves of infection globally.

According to the World Health Organisation’s most recent report, it was behind 52% of cases sequenced in late June, up from 37% in one week. In the United States, it is estimated to be causing around 65% of infections.

Rising case numbers

BA5 is not new. First identified in January, it has been tracked by the WHO since April.

It is a sister variant of the Omicron strain that has been dominant worldwide since the end of 2021 and has already caused spikes in case rates – even with reduced testing – in countries including South Africa, where it was first found, as well as the United Kingdom, parts of Europe, and Australia.

Coronavirus cases worldwide have now been rising for four weeks in a row, WHO data showed.

Why is it spreading

Like its closely related sibling, BA4, BA5 is particularly good at evading the immune protection afforded either by vaccination or prior infection.

For this reason, “BA5 has a growth advantage over the other sublineages of Omicron that are circulating,” Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, told a news briefing on Tuesday.

For many people, this means that they are getting re-infected, often even a short time after having COVID-19. Van Kerkhove said the WHO is assessing reports of re-infections.

“We have ample evidence that people who’ve been infected with Omicron are getting infected with BA5. No question about it,” said Gregory Poland, a virologist and vaccine researcher with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.