Coronavirus spread: Punjab government bans indoor wedding events till January 31

LAHORE: In a bid to check the spread of coronavirus, the Punjab government has imposed a ban on holding wedding ceremonies at the marriage halls across the province. The owners of marriage halls have been barred from arranging indoor events from November 20 to January 31.

The notification issued by the provincial government, however, allows holding of outdoor ceremonies with maximum capacity of 300 people subject to implementation of Covid-19 SOPs. On the other hand, Punjab has reported 609 fresh corona cases and 15 deaths during the last 24 hours taking the provincial tally of cases to 112,893 and total deaths to 2811.

During the last 24 hours, 16297 tests were conducted which showed positivity rate of cases in Punjab as 3.7 percent. With recovery of 44 more patients, the total number of recovered patients has reached 97,890. As many 868 coronavirus recoveries were made during the last 24 hours across the country taking the total number of recoveries to 327,542 showing recovery rate as 88.8 percent.

Moreover, the Punjab Primary and Secondary Healthcare department has conducted an audit of the Covid-19 data at private hospitals in the province. A spokesman for the department said that the data for 292 patients who died of the virus has been added to the provincial toll, taking the total number of fatalities to 2,811.

He added that the data could not be entered into the official record due to a multitude of reasons such as incorrect names and addresses, and a delay in test results. He added that the audit was conducted on data from March to November. "After conducting the audit, the data has been forwarded to all the agencies concerned, including the National Command and Operation Centre," he said.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020