KARACHI: A consignment of 50,000 testing kits — sufficient for testing suspected Covid-19 patients for the next 15 days — has arrived through the flight of a private courier service after Sindh got “no response from Islamabad” on its request to allow cargo flight operations to bring imported items from China and the United Kingdom, officials and industry sources said on Saturday.

They said the kits imported by the Sindh government would help boost its daily testing capacity, which currently touches the 2,000 mark.

They said the fresh consignment was disbursed fast among health facilities conducting tests of suspected coronavirus patients.

“We want to enhance our capacity to 5,000 [tests] per day by the end of this month,” Chief Minister’s Adviser Barrister Murtaza Wahab told Dawn. “We have enhanced our capacity within a month and touched a little over 2,000 lately.”

He said an international courier and cargo company was hired by the Sindh government and it had brought some 50,000 testing kits. “We have now secured a 15-day testing operation. Arrangements are being made for more consignments.”

The kits are sufficient for testing suspected coronavirus patients over the next 15 days

In a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan, he said, it was decided that Sindh would try to reach 5,000 tests per day by the end of the current month and the provincial administration was very much hopeful to meet the target.

The Sindh government had last week claimed that the testing kits for coronavirus it had would only last for less than two weeks. It feared that the imports of such items could be further delayed due to suspension of cargo flights.

In the situation, the Sindh government believed, only Islamabad could help by allowing cargo flight operations to bring the imported consignments from China and the UK. The situation emerged when Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Pechuho revealed that the province had been left with only 6,000 coronavirus testing kits, which were likely to last for 12 days.

More testing facilities soon

A senior official at the Sindh health department said that the number of testing facilities in Karachi and other parts of Sindh would likely be increased as a few health facilities had recently added value to their system to prepare for the new challenges.

“In Karachi, the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC) is likely to offer testing services for suspected coronavirus patients very soon. Similarly, hospitals in a district or two will also start the same service in the next few weeks,” said the official.

Currently, the suspected patients of Covid-19 in Karachi are being tested at the Civil Hospital Karachi, the Ojha campus of the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS), the Indus Hospital, the Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation, PNS Shifa and Dr Ziauddin Hospital.

Facilities in Jamshoro and Gambat are also conducting tests.

Published in Dawn, April 19th, 2020