Residents in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul on Thursday said that the COVID-19 deaths and the number of active cases are much higher than the figures given by the Ministry of Health.

They said that people even in remote regions of the country have the symptoms of the virus, but they are not able to consult doctors because of the lack of health resources.

This comes as the pandemic rapidly surges in most provinces of the country.

“There are no homes where there are no symptoms of coronavirus. The statistics provided by the Ministry of Health are not correct, because may people are not discussing it,” said Mukhtar Yousufi, a resident in Kabul.

“You can see the deaths before your eyes, the people are dying, these are all because of the coronavirus and the people are dying,” said Sultan Ahmadzai, a resident in Kabul.

“There are two or three people in every home, I don’t know what statistics the Ministry of Public Health is talking about,” said Nazeer Ahmad, a resident in Kabul.

“The government should avoid giving fake hope to the people. If the government shows the figures as less, then the people do not take the coronavirus seriously,” said a resident in Kabul named Ali.

Latest COVID-19 figures in Afghanistan:

The Ministry of Public Health on Thursday reported 658 new positive cases of the coronavirus out of 1,301 samples tested over the last 24 hours.

The ministry also reported 42 new deaths from COVID-19 and 1,502 recoveries. With this the total number of cases is now 27,532, the total reported deaths are 546, and total recoveries are 7,660.

42 is the highest number of deaths the ministry has reported in a single day.

The highest count of new positive cases was reported in Kabul with 415, followed by Bamiyan (62 cases), Takhar (40), Kandahar (27), Balkh (6), Logar (21), Baghlan (17), Ghazni (2), Parwan (7), Kunduz (22), Panjshir (14), Faryab (4), Ghor (5), Zabul (6), and Daikundi (10).

Also, the ministry reported 17 COVID-19 deaths in Kabul, 19 in Herat, 1 in Balkh, 2 in Samangan and 3 in Faryab in the last 24 hours.

So far, 61,599 samples have been tested in the government’s testing centers and there are 19,326 active COVID-19 cases in the country, according to data by the Ministry of Public Health.

The number of deaths from COVID-19 globally is more than 448,962 and the number of global coronavirus cases is 8,349,972, according to Johns Hopkins University.