The first patient of coronavirus in Karachi who contracted the infection has recovered, Sindh government confirmed on Friday.
“Very happy to inform that the 1st corona virus patient in #Sindh who was being attended to has recovered and his tests have now come out as NEGATIVE. Alhamdolillah,” Sindh government spokesperson Murtaza Wahab posted on his Twitter handle.
Sindh health department spokesperson said the patient had been diagnosed with the coronavirus 10 days ago. However, he has tested negative thrice for the virus over the last 24 hours and no symptoms of the infection have been observed in the patient over the past 48 hours. “The patient is being sent home now,” he said. On Thursday, Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza had confirmed the emergence of the sixth coronavirus case in the country. The latest, too, had emerged from Karachi. Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid Friday said that out of 48 suspected coronavirus cases in the province, 44 persons were tested negative and sent home.
Speaking at a news conference in Lahore to give updates on the situation, she said three more of the suspected cases tested negative on Friday while the result of one of them is awaited. Talking about pilgrims who have returned to Punjab from Iran, she said out of 3,056 pilgrims, 2,700 have been screened and sent home and another 2,500 people are under quarantine at Taftan border
Dismissing rumours that the Punjab government is not prepared to deal with the virus, she said, “We have formed a new technical team, even at this time, it is having a meeting at the Chief Minister’s Office to decide the red lines such as at what number of cases we will ban public gatherings and close schools.”
She said more than 10,000 people have been trained to deal with the possible coronavirus cases.
She said China managed to control the spread of the virus only through ‘restriction of movement’. She said the Punjab government is creating a strategy to prevent an outbreak. “We receive a report every four hours and our surveillance centre is operating 24 hours a day,” she said.
The minister said the provincial government has dedicated three hospitals for coronavirus in the province – the Rawalpindi Institute of Urology and Transplantation, which is fully equipped with ventilators, medicines, masks and other protective equipment; Recep Tayyip Erdogan Hospital in Muzaffargarh and Pakistan Kidney and Liver Institute in Lahore. She said a high dependency unit is present and rules for isolation are in place in every district of Punjab. “We have a level-3 lab which is equipped with diagnostic kits and we have ordered additional diagnostic kits. Kits are also available at Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer and Research Hospital for free testing. We have also talked with Chughtai Lab for more tests [if the number of suspected patients rises],” she added.
She sought to calm people’s fears about the disease. “[The virus] started in China and has spread to 82 countries … but the important news is that 50,000 people have recovered and have been sent home. It is a difficult situation because its transmission is very quick but people should remember that its fatality rate is around three per cent. This is not like the earlier SARS virus,” she said.
In his remarks, Punjab Information and Culture Minister Fayyazul Hassan Chohan said the government has started an information campaign about the virus and has made clerics and schoolteachers a part of it.
Yasmeen Rashid said booklets have been distributed in schools and colleges to inform students about the virus. She said mosques have also been instructed to inform worshippers about protection measures.
