Kabul municipality on Thursday said it had suspended the municipal bus service until further notice due to the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the country.

Services will be suspended from Saturday, the municipality said.

“The city buses that operate in Kart-e-Naw and Ahmad Shah Baba Mina will be stopped from this Saturday to avoid the spread of coronavirus,” the municipality announced on its Facebook page.

The municipality stated that the service will resume once the infection rate levels out.

The municipality also called on all drivers to keep their passenger numbers low in vehicles and for all members of the public to adhere to health protocols including social distancing regulations and the wearing of masks.

This comes after the Ministry of Public Health on Wednesday reported 94 deaths from COVID-19 across the country.

However, analysts have stated that the official tally of COVID cases is far lower than the actual figures.

According to a World Health Organization report late last month, “limited public health resources, lack of people coming forward for testing, as well as the absence of a national death register” could mean that COVID-19 cases and related deaths are underreported in the country.
The report stated that as of 20 May, “only 434,506 tests have been conducted for a population of 40.4 million” since the start of the pandemic. This means that Afghanistan ranked 194 of 220 countries and territories on that day.

Afghanistan’s test-positivity rate of 15 percent also indicates “overall undertesting of potential cases,” said the report. Five days later, on 25 May, of the 3,489 tests conducted countrywide, 24.8 percent were positive, according to Worldometer.