KARACHI: The Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah Thursday expressed raised red flag to the federal government saying as a nation, Pakistan’s preparedness to contain Coronavirus threat is “weak, unorganized and without national guidance” and complained that Sindh has been left alone to tackle the threat of the pandemic.
“We are not prepared to face the Coronavirus outbreak because the provinces, particularly Sindh is left alone to take decision whatever it wants without any guidance from the federal government and that is dangerous.”
This he said on Thursday while participating in the meeting of Prime Minister’s Special Assistant on Health Dr Zafar Mirza through video link from CM House. The chief minister was assisted by Minister Health Dr Azra Pechuho, Chief Secretary Mumtaz Shah, Advisor Law Murtaza Wahab, PSCM Sajid Jamal Abro, Secretary Health Dr Zahid Abbasi, Prof. Dr Faisal of Aga Khan and others.
Murad Ali Shah said that thousands of people were landing at the airports in Pakistan and our system could not diagnose them even if any of them have symptoms of influenza or fever. “All the cases we detected were cleared from the airport,” he said. He said that 14 cases were detected in Sindh because his dedicated team was running from pillar to post to identify and track the persons with travel history and even pursue those coming into their contact. The chief minister said that the issues of closing borders, closing or opening of educational institutions, strict checking at the airports, quarantine arrangements, travelling of pilgrims from Taftan to up-country needed to have been taken at the national level. “Only Sindh and Balochistan have closed educational institutions and we are also taking such decisions in isolation,” he regretted.
He said that 2,683 pilgrims from Pakistan were in quarantine at Taftan, near the Balochistan border, of them 853 belonged to Sindh who would start arriving in the province from Friday evening for whom necessary arrangements were made at Sukkur.
The meeting was told that so far Sindh govt has conducted 198 tests of suspects, of them 184 were declared as negative and only 14 were positive. The chief minister said all of the 14 cases contracted the infection when they were abroad and there was no local transmission. He added out of 14 cases, eight have the travel history of Syria, three of Dubai-UK and three of Iran, but do we know how many passengers were checked from the countries, other than Iran, he questioned.
Murad Ali Shah expressed the fear that the Sindh health professionals dealing with the Coronavirus cases are at risk and there was no national guidance for them. He asked the federal government to adopt zero tolerance policy at the airports and all the passengers travelling to Sindh should be advised to be quarantined at home for 14 days. Surveillance should be strengthened further and capacity of quarantine and isolation centers should also be enhanced, he said. The chief minister also asked the federal government to start mass-media awareness campaign for community engagement while underlining the need for multi-sectoral team work. The Special Assistant to PM on Health Dr Zafar Mirza said that a meeting would be held on Friday (tomorrow) in which important decisions would be taken.
Earlier, the 15th meeting of Taskforce on Coronoavirus held under the chairmanship of Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah was informed that Sindh government with the support of airport authorities checked 3,063 passengers on Wednesday, of them "only one was suspected to have acquired the infection."
The suspected patient who had returned from Iraq was hospitalised. He directed commissioner Karachi to test all the pilgrims arriving in the city from Taftan, Balochistan. He directed the health department to arrange the testing kits.
Shah directed health department to maintain a register of the passengers and collect health, travel cards from them and feed them in the data base. He directed chief secretary to depute at least eight data entry operators at the airport. Shah was told that so far the public hospitals working across Sindh have informed of 1,874 patients suffering from pneumonia and high fever while the private hospitals have given a list of 702 such patients. The health department on Thursday conducted 33 tests and all of them turned out to be negative. Commissioner Sukkur informed the chief minister that they have two suspects and necessary medical investigation was taking place.
