Balochistan govt extends lockdown till May 19

QUETTA: Balochistan government’s spokesperson Liaquat Shahwani on Tuesday announced that provincial govt has decided to extend lockdown for 15 more days, ARY News reported.

“Following the increase in coronavirus cases, Balochistan has extended its lockdown until May 19 in order to control the spread of coronavirus,” he said while addressing a press conference.

Liaquat Shahwani has said that the coronavirus is spreading at an alarming rate in the province and the death rate has also increased.

“In order to control the coronavirus, effective measures such as social distancing and isolation should be practiced,” he said and added the number of locally-transmitted cases in the province was increasing.

“The local transmission rate in the province is 88pc,” added Shahwani.

He further said that Balochistan has received testing kits and Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) from the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) and federal govt has assured of providing more safety equipment to the province.

“We asked the federal government to provide us with 50,000 PCR kits. We have also requested NDMA to provide more ventilators”.

“We have two polymerase chain reaction (PCR) machines for testing thus far, they were disinfected two days ago,” he added.

Earlier in April, the Balochistan govt extended the lockdown till May 5.