Screening a must for outbound passengers from tomorrow: Moeed

Ag Agencies

ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Security Division Dr Moeed Yusuf said on Thursday the screening of all outbound passengers would be started from Saturday (tomorrow), after Emirates and Etihad airways suspended passenger service to Pakistan a day earlier.

In a media briefing at the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), he said only healthy passengers would be allowed to board the outgoing flights. He asked the ailing passengers to avoid taking risk of travelling as the sick passengers would not be allowed to go abroad.

A passenger would have to fill a health form before leaving abroad and each passenger would have to follow standard operating procedure (SOP), Moeed said, adding the passengers going to other countries should comply with the rules of respective countries and conduct Covid-19 test, if required by their destination country.

He said over 200,000 stranded Pakistanis would be brought back in the country in next two to three weeks. “40,000 to 45,000 stranded Pakistanis will return to their native country every week through 270 flights,” the special assistant said.

This would be a commercial operation and the government would monitor the whole operation, he said, adding the priority was to help bring back the labours stranded abroad mostly in Gulf countries.

He said some 200,000 Pakistanis were stranded in various countries, while over 100,000 stranded Pakistanis had so far returned to the country.

Brushing aside the allegations that overseas Pakistanis were instrumental in spreading Covid-19 in the country, he said according to latest analysis, 97 per cent Pakistanis had been infected by local coronavirus carriers.

The NCOC said on Thursday some 148 people had lost their lives while battling Covid-19 during the last 24 hours. As per the latest figures released by the NCOC, total active corona cases in the country have surged to 107,760 — including 4,044 cases registered on June 24. A total of 192,970 cases have so far been detected, of which 74,070 cases have been registered in Sindh; 71,191 in Punjab; 23,887 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP); 9,817 in Balochistan; 11,710 in Islamabad Capital Territory; 1,365 in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and 930 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).

Some 3,903 Covid-19 patients have succumbed to the disease across the country. Out of the total 1,542 ventilators allocated for Covid-19 patients, 571 vents have been occupied by patients across the country and no patient was on the ventilator in the AJK and GB. As many as 81,307 Covid-19 patients have so far been recovered.

A total of 1,171,976 tests have so far been conducted across the country and 21,835 coronavirus tests had been conducted during the last 24 hours. As many as 5,895 corona patients had been admitted to 769 hospitals.

Meanwhile, another frontline doctor battling Covid-19, Additional Civil Surgeon, Khairpur Medical College Hospital (KMCH), Dr Willayat Gopang passed away on Thursday due to the viral infection.

He was diagnosed with Covid-19 some 20 days ago and remained in the isolation ward in Larkana but was shifted to a private hospital in Karachi after his condition deteriorated. He was put on a ventilator but could not survive.

Dr Gopang is the second frontline doctor from Khairpur who lost his life while battling with the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad recovered from Covid-19 on Thursday as his PCR test result came negative.