F.P. Report
KARACHI: A Syria-returned man tested positive for novel coronavirus in Karachi on Monday, pushing the tally to five in Sindh and eight in the country.
According to the Sindh Health department, a 53-year-old patient is a resident of Karachi East and was tested positive today. He has a travel history of visiting Syria and returned home via Doha.
All his contacts have been quarantined, the provincial authorities said.
So far eight Pakistanis have been tested positive for COVID-19, the mysterious viral pneumonia-like disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Five of them belong to Sindh while one has already recovered and discharged from the hospital in Karachi.
Six people among eight positive cases had a history of travel to Iran and one to Syria.
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah has directed all government and private hospitals to share details of patients with symptoms of pneumonia so that their further medical investigations could be conducted to ensure that they have not contracted the mysterious disease.
A day earlier, the de facto health minister, Dr Zafar Mirza, confirmed that 4th patient was tested positive for the contagious disease in the provincial capital.
The new case has emerged as all educational institutions in Sindh have been closed till March 13 over fears of the contagious disease’s outbreak in the province.
The mysterious COVID-19 virus, which originated in a vet market of the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, has since then spread to more than 100 countries of the world, killing over 3,500 and infecting around 110,000, mostly in China thus far.
But new outbreaks in Europe, the Middle East and in Asia have fanned fears of the contagion taking hold in poor nations that lack the healthcare 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.
