Daily Times

The Sindh health department has decided to convert a 50-bed newly constructed hospital in the city’s suburbs as the ‘exclusive treatment facility’ for coronavirus patients in Sindh, officials said on Friday.

The patients will be shifted to the 50-bed hospital in Gadap Town from Monday where an intensive care unit (ICU) has also been set up.

Health Secretary Zahid Ali Abbasi and Health Services Director General Mubin Ahmed Memon visited the hospital on Friday to inspect the arrangements there.

Notably, WHO experts had advised the Sindh government to establish or identify a separate health facility to keep and treat the confirmed coronavirus patients away from other patients.

A team of the Sindh health department and the IHN on Friday visited the newly-constructed health facility in Malir District and found it a ‘perfect place’ to keep the coronavirus patients at the health facility, away from the city, while the joint team also identified another health facility in the nearby area where suspected patients could be kept in quarantine.

According to the sources, the Dow University Hospital said they received 20 suspected COVID1-19 cases on Thursday. Of them, four were family members of the Karachi patient. “Fourteen of them were asymptomatic and were subsequently discharged with instructions for home quarantine,” the hospital administration revealed.

The health department official maintained that the confirmed patients of coronavirus would be shifted from the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH), Indus Hospital, Dow University Hospital, Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Civil Hospital and Lyari General Hospital in the fully-equipped ambulances of the Aman Foundation.