MUZAFFARABAD: Three more persons, including a 12-year-old girl, tested positive for Covid-19 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, pushing total number of cases in the area to nine, a senior official confirmed on Wednesday.

According to Chief Secretary Mathar Niaz Rana, two of the new positive cases emerged in Bhimber district and one in Sudhnoti. He said that the 12-year-old victim was from the same family in Bhimber, two members of which had tested positive after attending a funeral in Sarai Alamgir, Jhelum.

The second victim in Bhimber was an expatriate who had returned from the United Kingdom more than a week ago, he said, adding that the victim in Sudhnoti district had returned from Raiwand Tableeghi Markaz.

He said that 10 more samples had been collected at the AJK health facilities during the past 24 hours, taking the tally of suspected cases to 249. Only nine out of the 188 results received so far had tested positive, he said, adding the condition of all patients except one was stable.

The only critical patient was anelderly person in the isolation hospital of Mirpur who had already been suffering from cancer, he said.

In response to a question, Mr Rana said that screening of samples had begun at the Virology Lab of Abbas Institute of Medical Sciences (Aims), Muzaffarabad since last week.

He said: “The Lab in Aims has capacity to conduct 40-50 tests in a day but it is conducting 8-10 tests daily because so far, not too many symptomatic cases were reporting at the health facilities.

“However, from now onwards we will screen even asymptomatic persons, particularly those who had remained in contact with the positive cases or had returned from outside [of AJK] for which lists are being prepared on a fast-track basis.”

He said the second testing lab in AJK would become operational in Mirpur “on trial basis” on Thursday while the third lab in Rawalakot would also start screening by Friday. Hopefully a fourth lab would also be established in the town of Kotli within one week, he added.

After the commissioning of two more labs we will be conducting over 100 tests per day, he added.

Published in Dawn, April 2nd, 2020