Daily Times

Price of surgical masks skyrocketed in Karachi on Thursday after two cases of coronavirus were confirmed in the country. According to reports, masks have either disappeared from medical stores in the city or are being sold at exorbitant prices across the metropolis. A medical store owner told a box of ordinary surgical masks which would have ordinarily cost somewhere between Rs 300 to 400 is now being sold for more than Rs2,000. Store owners also said that prices of N-95 masks used to protect from coronavirus, despite becoming more expensive is also no longer available in the market. Despite a ban by the government of Pakistan on the export of masks, nearly 10,000 N-95 masks and more than 3,600 ordinary regular masks were exported to China. Six companies were given special permission to export masks to China, leading to a shortage in the country. Meanwhile, Mayor of Karachi Waseem Akhtar has declared emergency in all the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) hospitals in Karachi on Wednesday after first coronavirus case was reported in the city. Isolation wards have been setup in Abbasi Shaheed Hospital (ASH), Landhi Medical Complex Hospital, and Sarfaraz Rafiqui Shaheed Hospital on the directives of Waseem Akhtar to meet the novel coronavirus threat.