Pakistan, where a poorly enforced shutdown has been in place since late March, has recorded 24,073 cases of COVID-19, with 564 deaths. On Thursday, authorities said there had been 1,523 new cases and 38 deaths in the preceding 24 hours. "We're deciding that we are ending this lockdown now," Khan said in a televised address on Thursday. "It will definitely lead to an increase in the number of cases, the number of critical cases," the secretary of Pakistan's Young Doctors' Association, Salman Kazmi, told Reuters. The IMF and the World Bank have forecast a bleak economic outlook for Pakistan as it heads toward a major recession.

Source: bd News24 May 07, 2020 14:26 UTC