As the threat of Coronavirus looms in Pakistan, there are no laboratories in the country equipped to diagnose the deadly virus. Special Assistant to the PM on Health DR Zafar Mirza has said that Pakistan has approached the authorities in China and The Netherlands to help confirm suspected cases of passengers arriving in the country. Pakistan has already started screening passengers at four airports of the country.
Amid the coronavirus outbreak in China, Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has halted flights of China Southern Airlines to Pakistan until January 31. The decision was made in a meeting of the Lahore airport management with the Chief Operating Officer Chaudhary Nazir in the chair. The meeting decided that a fully equipped medical staff will check all the passengers coming from China with thermal scanners. A medical expert from Meo Hospital will oversee the operations.
A Chinese man suspected to have contracted the coronavirus has been admitted to a hospital in Multan. 40-year-old, Feng Fen, had returned to Pakistan from Wuhan 10 days ago and was shifted from Chinese camp in Industrial Estate to Nishtar Hospital. However, National Institute of Health (NIH) has released a statement saying the case does not seem to be coronavirus and patient is stable.
The Foreign Office has confirmed that US President Donald Trump will not visit Pakistan during his tour to India next month. President Trump “wants an exclusive visit to Pakistan which is not linked to any other visit in the region because Pakistan has its own distinct place,” FO Spokesperson Aisha Farooqi said at the weekly media briefing.
The Ministry of Religious Affairs has suggested that Hajj costs may increase this year by over one hundred thousand rupees because of hike in the US dollar’s exchange rate and rising airfares. After this hike the total cost of government Hajj package would become around Rs550,000. A total of 179,000 people are going to perform Hajj this year.
Prime Minister Imran Khan has claimed the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) “is really helping” the country, while labelling all criticisms of the project ‘nonsense’. During an interview to a US news channel CNBC, when asked if CPEC was a debt-trap for Pakistan, Mr Khan said that the Chinese came to help Pakistan when the country was “at the rock bottom.”
Schools in Lahore will close at 11am on January 24 and 25 due to T20 matches between Pakistan and Bangladesh at Gaddafi Stadium, according to a spokesperson for the Punjab Education Department. The Bangladesh cricket team arrived in Pakistan on Wednesday to play a three-match T20I series that starts Friday. Lahore will be hosting all the three T20I games of the series at Gaddafi Stadium on January 24, 25 and 27.
In a recent public interaction, Prime Minister Imran Khan revealed that he barely manages expenses in his current salary as it is less than the salary of his ministers. According to an official salary slip issued from the Prime Minister House, Prime Minister Khan’s salary is indeed less than what his cabinet’s ministers earn as well as the chief ministers. The gross salary amount of PM is Rs. 201,574, which further reduces to Rs. 196,979 after tax and other deductions.
Policemen with body cameras and special tablets have been posted at five different checkposts across the capital city, according to the Islamabad police. They said these cameras linked to the safe city system will record conversation between citizens and officials at pickets. The move is aimed at addressing complaints of alleged police officials’ misbehaviour with people or vice versa at checkposts and to upgrade and bring the force up to international standards.
Pakistani team, headed by Minister for Economic Affairs Hammad Azhar, has “defended country’s compliance report during the joint group of FATF meeting held at Beijing, China” and reportedly satisfied the global watchdog. The Indian side had to face embarrassment as the US and European countries did not extend their support to their “tough but mostly irrelevant questions” during the joint group meeting.