Pakistani authorities screened hundreds of people who had recently arrived from Iran, a major new hotspot for coronavirus, after Islamabad confirmed its first two infections.
Officials in the teeming port city of Karachi, where one of the two cases was detected, said they are also working to ensure a supply of face masks, as prices shot up with concern growing over Pakistan’s ability to handle an outbreak.
At least one of the two cases announced on Wednesday, a 22-year-old man in Karachi, appeared to have contracted the virus in Iran, authorities have said.
The government has now collected the data for 1,500 people in Sindh province who have arrived in Pakistan from Iran recently, Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah told a press conference.
“We’re going to the next step,” he said, adding that there are a total 8,000 such pilgrims across the country.
“We’re locating each one of them,” Shah said, adding they will go through 15 days of strict monitoring before being allowed to leave their homes.
He said all these people and anyone who had got in touch with them had to be isolated.
“They would be screened diligently until they are cleared,” he said.
It is unclear how many more people are being screened throughout the country.
Shah also said that the provincial government is working with local surgical mask importers and manufacturers to ensure a supply for the province.
Doctors at Islamabad’s largest public hospital – where the second case was detected – said that they have not been given masks to treat patients.
“We have been requesting that they provide us masks and other protective equipment for four days, but no one cares,” Dr Fazl-e-Rabbi, president of the Young Doctors Association at the hospital, told AFP.
With porous borders, creaking hospitals and large illiterate populations, Pakistan faces a potentially devastating health crisis from the new coronavirus.
The virus has spread to more than 30 countries, killing more than 2,700 and infecting 80,000, mostly in China.
But new outbreaks in Europe, the Middle East and in Asia have fanned fears of the contagion taking hold in nations lacking the infrastructure to cope.
There are growing fears in Pakistan – sandwiched between China and Iran, both hotspots for the disease – over how the country would deal with the outbreak.
The cost of surgical masks had risen nearly tenfold in Karachi, from Rs180 ($1.16) to Rs1,400 ($9.09) per box of 50 masks.
“Many buyers are coming to us ... but the stocks are gone,” said Noman Qureshi, a shop owner in a medical market in downtown Karachi.
Schools in several areas were shut and flights to and from Iran were suspended yesterday to try to stop the spread of new coronavirus, after reporting its first cases of the infection, officials said.
The authorities shut schools in Sindh and the southwestern province of Baluchistan, which borders Iran.
Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority said that it was suspending all flight operations with Iran starting from evening yesterday till further notice.
“We have decided to close the flights with Iran,” the authority’s spokesman Sattar Khokhar told Reuters.
Three Iranian carriers run seven flights a week to and from Pakistan.
Pakistan closed its border with Iran on Sunday following the outbreak there.
The authorities, who have kept more than 200 of the pilgrims in quarantine at the border, have stepped up scanning measures at airports and other border crossing, including western Afghanistan, said Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Zafar Mirza.
He called on the people to not panic.
“We don’t need to worry unnecessarily. We shouldn’t create any kind of panic,” the health minister said on Wednesday.
The health ministry has launched a media campaign to educate people, urging them to co-operate with the authorities to help identify any suspected cases.
A journalist uses his cellphone outside Karachi’s Aga Khan University Hospital, where a Covid-19 patient has been admitted.
