LAHORE - Punjab Chief Minister Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar Tuesday advised the political parties that public meetings should be fully avoid-ed as there was a trend of increase in the number of corona patients.

In a statement issued here on Tuesday, the Chief Minister regretted that the PDM had no concern with public safety as it was playing with the lives of the people to pro-mote its negative politics.

He said that the opposition’s rallies were causing an increase in the number of coro-na cases. “The opposition parties should re-alize that corona is a bitter reality. They are playing with the lives of the people to achieve nefarious designs showing the greed of the PDM”, he remarked.  

Usman Buzdar maintained that the negli-gence shown during the second wave of the corona had resulted in dangerous conse-quences as 45 patients have died during the last 24 hours.  The CM advised the people to remain care-ful as the world was moving towards an-other lockdown to remain safe from the co-rona. “Overcoming the corona is not possi-ble without public cooperation and people can remain safe by following social distanc-ing and wearing facemasks”, he added.  

Separately, Special Assistant to CM on In-formation Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan said the corrupt PDM cabal was spreading corona through its public meetings. In a statement issued on Tuesday, she said that an unnatural union of 11 miscellane-ous parties was showing sheer enmity with the people. She averred that the opposi-tion’s narrative was limited to plunder and minting pockets. “The real designs of those who raise the slogan of giving respect to vote are to accept their ill-gotten money”. She asserted that the days of looters were numbered and those putting the lives of the people in danger had no right to do politics. The rise in corona cases is due to the meet-ings of the unscrupulous gang, she added.

While giving details of the latest corona sit-uation in the province, she said the number of active corona patients was 17,941 whereas,  543 confirmed cases have been reported.

She said 45 had died and 15,356 had been tested during the last 24 hours. “So far, 19,95,667 persons have been tested and out of 119578, 98601 have recovered. A to-tal of 3,036 patients have died in Punjab till date”, she said.