Over 16,000 inmates at risk of contracting coronavirus, Sindh govt told   

KARACHI: Over 16,000 inmates in the Sindh prisons are at risk of contracting the novel coronavirus as no efforts are underway to take preventive measures aimed at avoiding the outbreak of the virus in already overcrowded jails, ARY NEWS reported on Friday.

This was informed by the Inspector General (IG) Prisons Sindh Nusrat Mangan in a letter conveyed to the Sindh government.

“There is a need to take measures on war footing to ensure availability of facilities aimed at averting the spread of the virus among the inmates and prison officials,” he said and added that currently there are no facilities available to deal with the virus in any prison of the province.

He asked the health authorities to send special teams to conduct screening of the inmates.”We are receiving many new inmates in our prison on a daily basis and therefore a process to check the inmates should be devised to avoid any outbreak of the virus in the prisons,” he said.

It is pertinent to mention here that the first case of the novel coronavirus is reported from Karachi on Wednesday night, where a 22-year-old student of the Karachi University (KU) tested positive for the disease.

However,  family members of the student diagnosed with the disease tested negative on Thursday at a private hospital and were subsequently discharged.

Read More: Both coronavirus patients stable, no serious threat to life: Zafar Mirza 

The 22-year-old patient confirmed as infected with the coronavirus in Karachi had been taking his regular classes after returning to Pakistan from Iran, said Karachi University (KU) spokesperson today.

The spokesperson said the youngster is a student of International Relations evening programme from MA previous. He said it was decided to conduct tests of the fellow classmates of the patient.