Pakistani lawmaker baffles all; claims half of UK's population has Covid & brazens it out

A lawmaker of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's PTI party has made yet another bizarre claim, stating that half of United Kingdom's population is infected with Coronavirus. In a video shared by Pakistani journalist Naila Inayat, the lawmaker during a news programme said that out of UK's 6.5 crore population, more than half are infected and over 33,000 are dead. 

'This is breaking news even for UK'

After listening to this, the panellists and the anchor were visibly baffled by her claim and the anchor asked. "Were nearly three crore people infected?" after which the lawmaker tried to justify the claim by saying that Britain opted to go for "herd immunity" and then they imposed a lockdown but the damage was already done.

Britain's official coronavirus death toll is now over 40,000 with almost 10,000 dead in care homes in England and Wales alone, according to a statistical update released on Tuesday. 

Some 40,902 deaths from COVID-19 were registered by May 8, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), meaning the true toll will be even higher when deaths registered over the last 10 days are taken into account. The ONS figures include deaths where COVID-19 is suspected or mentioned on the death certificate.

The government's official rolling tally, which was 34,796 as of Monday, is lower because it only records deaths after positive tests, according to AFP.

Coronavirus in Pakistan

Meanwhile, Pakistan reported 1,841 new cases of the novel coronavirus and 36 fatalities during the last 24 hours, taking the total infections in the country to nearly 44,000 with 939 deaths, the health ministry said on Tuesday.

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As the coronavirus cases in the national capital Islamabad crossed the 1,000-mark, other parts of Pakistan also continued to witness a surge in the infections. Till now, 17,241 cases have been detected in Sindh, 15,976 in Punjab, 6,230 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 2,820 in Balochistan, 1,034 in Islamabad, 550 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 115 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

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(With PTI inputs)