‘Over 11,000 Pak expats to be repatriated per week’

ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Security Dr Moeed Yusuf said on Monday the government had scaled up its capacity to repatriate over 11,000 stranded overseas Pakistanis per week or within 10 days during the ongoing week and the passengers returning from abroad will immediately undergo coronavirus test.

Addressing a press conference at the National Command and Operation Centre here, he said Prime Minister Imran Khan had laid special emphasis on increasing facilities for the overseas Pakistanis as well as the number of Pakistanis being brought back from abroad.

Dr Yusuf said the main impediment in bringing back maximum number of overseas Pakistanis was the country’s existing testing and quarantine capacity. He added around 7,000-8,000 overseas Pakistanis had been repatriated in the past 10 days.

The Special Assistant noted that the data of all passengers since April 4 was thoroughly analysed and the positivity ratio of Covid-19 patients was more than the projections. “We are going to implement more flexible policy this time and the condition to wait for 48 hours to get tested has been abolished. However, the overseas Pakistanis will get tested as soon as possible where no cut short timeline could be given for getting tested and going back to homes,” he said.

Dr Yusuf mentioned it was decided after consultations with the health experts that the provinces were given the right to home quarantine for 14 days those people getting positive tests with showing no symptoms of Covid-19. He added the provinces would send the positive cases to their respective districts to get treatment closer to their home towns.

He urged the Pakistanis abroad to strictly abide by the guidelines as in case of increase in positivity ratio of coronavirus patients, the decision could be reversed, whereas negative cases would be allowed to go home and quarantine for 14 days.

He said it was being considered to make Sialkot and Quetta airports operational for managing the increasing number of passengers. “At present, 20,000 overseas Pakistanis have been repatriated and over 110,000 more want to come back and this number will increase further,” he said, urging the overseas Pakistanis to login covid.gov.pk for updated information regarding flights schedule.

The Special Assistant said from May 11 to May 21 as many as 10,710 overseas Pakistanis would be brought back from 22 countries, particularly from the Gulf countries.

He said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had contacted with the Gulf countries and in this regard it had been decided that the virus test of the overseas Pakistanis would first be conducted in their respective Gulf country and the passengers would be retested upon arrival in Pakistan.

He said social distancing among the passengers in the flights from Gulf countries would also be ensured, besides enhancing facilities for them.