KARACHI:Eminent infectious disease expert has expressed strong reservation over poor arrangements at Pakistani airports for passengers who are arriving from China after of outbreak of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) in Wuhan city of China and regretted that standard operating procedures (SOPs) are not being followed strictly.
President Infection Control Society Pakistan Prof Dr Muhammad Rafiq Khanani, while talking to PPI, said screening of passengers arriving at airports for novel coronavirus is not an effective way to contain outbreak as initial symptoms of coronavirus appear after five to eight days.
He said quarantine (restriction on the movement) of passengers for two-weeks is considered as the safest method to avoid further spread of this virus. He said each and every passenger arriving from China should be quarantined before allowing them going home.
He explained that coronavirus belonged to a virus family and corona means sign of crown on virus. He said there were 96 per cent chances that the virus spread in humans through infected-bats but study is under way on how transmission started from bats to people.
Dr Khanani said the first coronavirus case was detected on 1st December 2019 and around 24,000 people have been infected so far out of them 500 have died from this virus, mostly in China. He informed coronavirus has spread to about 24 countries.
He sign and symptoms of coronavirus are fever, cough, and sore throat, pain in body, nausea, pneumonia and infection in lungs. He said no any sign appear in infected patient in the first five days. He said virus spreads through air-droplet and hand-shaking. He said coronavirus reduces secretion process in human body.
President Infection Control Society Pakistan said coronavirus infected individual can affect two to three people and death ratio from this viral disease is two per cent but can surge to 40 per cent if preventive measures are not adopted.
He said people who have been already suffering from diabetes, cardiovascular and liver and other diseases are more vulnerable of this viral disease, particularly elderly people.
He feared the number of Chinese people working on different projects and students who are arriving to Pakistan after outbreak of novel coronavirus can transmit disease in the country.
He demanded the policymakers to quarantine the passengers for two weeks which is one of the oldest tools used in the communicable disease as presently no treatment facility is available for such patients.