Coronavirus: Sindh to monitor inter-provincial borders

KARACHI: Sindh government has decided to monitor inter-provincial borders amid apprehensions about spread of novel coronavirus, ARY News reported on Wednesday.

The provincial government departments will monitor the movement of people arriving in Sindh from other provinces, government sources said.

The provincial agencies will take information from the travelers entering in Sindh at the provincial border, sources said.

Sindh, having most cases of coronavirus in Pakistan, reeling under emergence of 10 cases of the disease within 24 hours including a relative of the provincial chief minister.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Tuesday said that none of the coronavirus patients infected within Pakistan, adding that all the 15 positive cases of the novel coronavirus in the province were came from abroad.

Presiding over a meeting, CM Murad Ali Shah said that all the coronavirus patients had reached in Sindh from Iran, Iraq, Syria, United Kingdom (UK) and other countries.

He maintained that over 3,000 people arriving from Iran were quarantined at Pakistan House in Taftan. The chief minister said that all the people quarantined in Taftan are healthy and added that none of them showed any symptoms of the highly contagious virus.

Earlier on Tuesday, two more confirmed cases of novel coronavirus (Covid-19) had surfaced in Sindh.

A spokesperson for the Sindh Health Department had said that one confirmed case of coronavirus had been reported in Hyderabad while the other case emerged in Karachi.

Special Assistant to Prime Minister on National Health Services Dr Zafar Mirza in a statement has said that all 19 cases in Pakistan brought the disease from abroad. “There is no evidence of local spread as yet,” he said. “If we act responsibly we can avoid spread.”