ISLAMABAD: Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar on Thursday said there had been decline in coronavirus cases in the country primarily due to a nearly 60 percent reduction in positive cases.

In a tweet, he said some people were saying that cases were down only because of testing reduction.

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The minister explained that if positivity rate had been more than 22 percent, which was in mid-June, the 24,262 tests done yesterday would have resulted in 5,500 cases, but the actual number of cases yesterday was 2,145.

The number of recoveries from COVID-19 continue to increase across the country with 178,737 patients so far recovered from the disease.

According to the latest statistics, 2145 new coronavirus cases were reported in the country during the last 24 hours taking the tally to 257,914.

These include 108,913 in Sindh, 88,539 in Punjab, 31,217 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,322 in Balochistan, 14,402 in Islamabad, 1,750 Gilgit-Baltistan and 1771 in Azad Kashmir.

Meanwhile, 40 patients died of the virus during the last 24 hours taking the death toll to 5,426.24, 262 corona tests were carried out during this period.