A medical oxygen plant has officially opened at the Ali Jinnah hospital in Kabul, with a ceremony that included high-level government officials including the health minister Ahmad Jawad Osmani and Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan Monsour Ahmad Khan.  

The plant has the capacity of producing 1,200 balloons of oxygen to service patients in the 300-bed hospital around the clock.  

At the inauguration ceremony, Minister Osmani said that COVID-19 cases are again on the rise and that the public should follow the health guidelines.  

“The number of patients admitted has increased five times, also the positive cases of coronavirus have increased three times and the graph is still rising,” said Ahmad Jawad Osmani, the acting Minister of Public Health.  

“The people should not be fearful or feel anxiety, but they should seriously act upon the health guidelines such as wearing a mask. If 95 percent of our people wear a face mask, then we will able to bring the circulation of COVID-19 in Afghanistan under control,” said Osmani.  

At the inauguration ceremony, Pakistan’s ambassador to Afghanistan Mansour Ahmad Khan said that many Afghans are traveling to Pakistan for cancer treatment. He said that his country is also trying to establish a cancer treatment center at the Ali Jinnah Hospital.  

“Pakistan and Afghanistan are brotherly countries and we are working to strengthen our relationship particularly in the field of development and Pakistan has been providing useful development assistance to Afghanistan” said Khan. 

The Pakistan ambassador said that his country has built three hospitals in Afghanistan.  

“Many Afghans unfortunately suffering from cancer have to go to either Pakistan or other countries for their medical treatment and it would be important in our view to work towards the addition of a cancer department here,” added Khan.  

Latest COVID-19 figures in Afghanistan:  

The Ministry of Public Health on Saturday reported 252 new positive cases of COVID-19 out of 1,387 samples tested in the last 24 hours.    

The Public Health Ministry also reported 11 deaths and 87 recoveries from COVID-19 in the same period.    

The new cases were reported in Kabul (48), Herat (13), Kandahar (8), Nangarhar (13), Takhar (153), Badakhshan (15), Maidan Wardak (1) and Laghman (1) provinces.   

The deaths were reported in Kabul (3), Herat (3), Balkh (1) and Takhar (4) provinces, according to data provided by the Ministry of Public Health.    

The data by the ministry shows that the cumulative number of total cases is now 46,215, the number of total reported deaths is 1,763, and the total number of recoveries is 36,731.    

So far, 148,800 samples have been tested in government centers and there are 7,418 known active COVID-19 cases in the country, data by the ministry indicates.    

The number of deaths from COVID-19 globally is more than 1,454,012 and the number of known global coronavirus cases is 62,336,859, according to Johns Hopkins University.