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Pakistan's energy issue remains an impediment to economic sectors facing significant obstacles in eliminating the energy demand-supply gap. Macroeconomic experts are looking for more suitable and inventive ways to construct a sustainable energy framework. The study inspects ten control factors, including household consumption expenditure, other electricity consumption, industrial value-added, urbanization population growth, agricultural value-added, arable land, rainfall pattern, public-private partnership, technological innovation, and institutional quality, to explore the electricity consumption of agricultural, commercial, industrial, and residential sectors from 1980 to 2019. We applied a novel dynamic ARDL simulation method, Cumulative Fourier Frequency Domain Causality, and structural break estimation approach. The findings reveal that agricultural, commercial, and industrial sectors have a greater influence on energy than residential sector determinants. More specifically, a 1 % increase in technological innovation in the commercial sector increases energy consumption by 0.029 and 0.141 % in the short and long-run, respectively. Additionally, a 1 % upsurge in the industrial sector's technological innovation coefficient indicates a short-run drop of 0.043 % and a long-run rise of 0.097 %. It implies that technological progress increases sectoral energy efficiency and is also environmentally friendly. While public-private partnerships are beneficial to the country's commercial activities, increasing institutional performance can enhance the productivity of the industrial sector. Also, household consumption and expenditure greatly impacted the residential sector. The findings suggest that understanding energy governance and policy methods is important to resolve equitable energy infrastructure challenges in Pakistan. • The study explores energy consumption distinguish factors at sectoral level in Pakistan. • We employed a novel methodological framework for empirical estimation. • Agriculture, commercial, and industrial sectors have higher impact on energy than residential sector. • The results show significant policy implications at the sectoral level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Active circulation of West Nile virus (WNV) was identified in blood donors in Pakistan. • All of the WNV-positive blood donors were asymptomatic carriers of the virus. • The viruses detected in Pakistan belonged to WNV lineage 1. • No mosquito pool was found positive in this study. This study was performed to determine the presence of West Nile virus (WNV) in mosquito specimens and human blood donors in Pakistan. A total of 4150 mosquito specimens were collected using CO 2 -baited traps from five selected districts of Punjab Province, Pakistan. The mosquitoes were taxonomically identified using standard morphological keys, resulting in 166 pools. In addition, 1070 serum samples were collected from human blood donors. RNA was extracted from mosquito and human samples and screened for WNV using a reverse transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR). None of the mosquito pools tested positive for WNV, whereas three samples from asymptomatic humans tested positive. To determine the WNV strains, partial sequences were compared against a global representation of 23 WNV sequences. The study strains were determined to come from WNV lineage 1. This study is novel in reporting the circulation of lineage 1 WNV in Pakistan. Given its ability to transmit from human to human via blood transfusion, this highlights the urgent need for nationwide surveillance to assess the distribution and impact of WNV in Pakistan. Determining the source of human infection will require more extensive mosquito sampling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We detected Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever virus infections in 4 provinces of Pakistan during 2017-2018. Overall, seroprevalence was 2.7% in humans and 36.2% in domestic livestock. Antibody prevalence in humans was highest in rural areas, where increased contact with animals is likely.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) is a zoonotic pathogen capable of causing severe respiratory disease in humans. Although dromedary camels are considered as a major reservoir host, the MERS-CoV infection dynamics in camels are not fully understood. Through surveillance in Pakistan, nasal (n = 776) and serum (n = 1050) samples were collected from camels between November 2015 and February 2018. Samples were collected from animal markets, free-roaming herds and abattoirs. An in-house ELISA was developed to detect IgG against MERS-CoV. A total of 794 camels were found seropositive for MERS-CoV. Prevalence increased with the age and the highest seroprevalence was recorded in camels aged > 10 years (81.37%) followed by those aged 3.1-10 years (78.65%) and ≤ 3 years (58.19%). Higher prevalence was observed in female (78.13%) as compared to male (70.70%). Of the camel nasal swabs, 22 were found to be positive by RT-qPCR though with high Ct values. Moreover, 2,409 human serum samples were also collected from four provinces of Pakistan during 2016-2017. Among the sampled population, 840 humans were camel herders. Although we found a high rate of MERS-CoV antibody positive dromedaries (75.62%) in Pakistan, no neutralizing antibodies were detected in humans with and without contact to camels.