Kabul:
Almost a 3rd of Afghanistan’s inhabitants — or 10 million folks — has been contaminated with the coronavirus, in accordance with well being ministry estimates printed Wednesday.
The determine comes from a survey based mostly on antibody checks on round 9,500 folks throughout the nation, with technical help from the World Well being Group, well being minister Ahmad Jawad Osmani mentioned at a press briefing.
The survey estimated that 31.5 p.c of the inhabitants had contracted the virus, with the best an infection charge in Kabul the place greater than half of town’s 5 million inhabitants had been thought to have been contaminated.
However the nation of round 32 million folks has solely restricted testing capability and has formally declared simply 36,000 instances and greater than 1,200 deaths.
“A second wave of the an infection is occurring all over the place on the planet and we can’t be an exception. We are going to use the findings of this survey to higher put together ourselves for a doable second wave,” Osmani mentioned.
Greater than 18 million folks worldwide have been contaminated with the virus because it first emerged in China late final yr.
The virus entered Afghanistan in February as 1000’s of migrants returned from neighbouring Iran, which on the time was the area’s worst-hit nation for the virus.
Since then Afghanistan, already wracked by many years of conflict, has been ravaged by COVID-19.
A survey on the mortality charge of coronavirus Afghanistan is underneath method.
(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV workers and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
Source link