COVID Watch (9th April 2020)

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COVID Watch

ICU in Skardu

A five-bed ICU has been set up at a private hospital in Skardu with a donation of Rs13.8 m raised by Pakistan Medical Association and doctors forum of Baltistan.
Facility with four ventilators, cardiac monitors, suction machine, oxygen concentrator, defibrillator machine, ECG machine, ABGs analyzer, breathing circuits with HME filters has now been taken over by the government to treat patients of COVID-19.
There were no ventilators in Skardu before this despite being one of the regions to have been hit with the pandemic badly.

Gravediggers’ Safety

PPE kits were provided to the gravediggers of Karachi by the Mayor Waseem Akhtar on Wednesday. The funeral prayers to be offered by the close relatives of the deceased only in the wake of coronavirus as per the Mayor’s directives.

ICT Quarantine Centres

All 14 quarantine centers in Islamabad are now full as all the flights bringing stranded Pakistanis back landed in the capital after provincial governments had refused to accommodate the federal government in the matter.
The officials working in Islamabad fear that the situation will get worse as 150 to 200
people are still arriving in the capital every day.
The only building left in ICT to be now as a quarantine center is the Sports Complex but may not be able to serve the purpose.

Pilgrims Tested

453 of 1,160 pilgrims in Multan declared ‘negative’ for COVID-19 were sent to their respective districts but now they all have tested positive.
They were sent back after they started protesting against the Multan administration for not letting them go home after testing negative and they also refused to cooperate with the police at the quarantine facilities. Later, the military was called in to take charge of the situation.
They made negotiations resulting in letting them to their respective areas and to be kept in local quarantine centers until the latest test results were out.
The district they were sent back to had no proper arrangements to keep the suspected and now confirmed patients of COVID-19.