Daily Times

The National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC), in coordination with the provinces and health professionals, on Monday reduced the quarantine period before testing for inbound air passengers from 48 hours to the earliest possible time.

Under the new policy, passengers will be transported to quarantine centres and will stay there until their tests results come back, after which they may be quarantined or instructed to self-isolate at home. The revised strategy will allow the government to raise weekly cap for inbound passengers from 7,000-8,000 to 11,000-12,000.

“We are going to implement more flexible policy this time and the condition to wait for 48 hours to get tested was abolished. However, the overseas Pakistanis will get tested as soon as possible where no cut short timeline could be given for getting tested and going back to homes,” Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) on National Security Dr Moeed Yusuf told a press conference at the NCOC. He said the provinces have been given the right to quarantine those people getting positive tests but showing no symptoms of Covid-19 at their homes for 14 days. He said the provinces will send the positive patients to their respective districts to get treatment closer to their home towns.

He said on special directives of the prime minister, the government has scaled up its capacity to repatriate over 11,000 stranded overseas Pakistanis per week during the ongoing week. “Around 11,000-12,000 overseas Pakistanis will be repatriated per week or within 10 days in the coming week,” he said, adding that the prime minister has laid special emphasis on increasing facilities for the overseas Pakistanis and increase the number of Pakistanis being brought back from abroad.

Dr Moeed said the main impediment in bringing back maximum overseas Pakistanis was the country’s existing testing and quarantine capacity. He said around 7,000-8,000 overseas Pakistanis were repatriated in the past 10 days.

The SAPM noted that the data of all passengers since April 4 was thoroughly analyzed and the positivity ratio of Covid-19 patients came back more than the projections. He urged Pakistanis abroad to strictly abide by the safety guidelines as in case of increase in positivity ratio of coronavirus patients, the decisions could be reversed.

He said it is being considered to make Sialkot and Quetta airports operational for managing the increasing number of passengers. “At present, 20,000 overseas Pakistanis have been repatriated and over 110,000 more want to come back where this number will increase further,” he said, adding that till May 21, as many as 10,710 overseas Pakistanis will be brought back from 22 countries, of which the major chunk is from the gulf countries.

He said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has contacted the Gulf countries and raised the issue of increased positive cases among passengers coming from the Gulf countries. It has been decided to conduct tests of overseas Pakistanis first in the respective gulf country and then again in Pakistan. He said social distancing among passengers in flights from Gulf countries will also be ensured.

Earlier, the NCOC mulled over post-May 9 lockdown status and the implementation mechanism for Ramazan standard operating procedures (SOPs) devised by the provinces. The NCOC, which met with Minister for Planning Development Reforms and Special Initiatives Asad Umar in the chair, took all provincial representatives on board to discuss preparations related to religious congregations during the last span of Ramazan. Speaking on the occasion, Asad Umar said the first three days of relaxing the lockdown are critical where the provinces should ensure strict compliance of SOPs as any leniency and complacency may spoil the purpose of the measures taken to contain Covid-19.

All chief secretaries of the provinces including Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan joined the conference through video link. Minister for Interior Brig (r) Ejaz Shah, Minister for Industries Hammad Azhar, Minister for National Food Security Fakhar Imam, Minister for Economic Affairs Khusroo Bakhtiar and SAPM on Health Dr Zafar Mirza also attended.