LAHORE: The Punjab government plans to establish the first Novel Coronavirus Isolation and Treatment Centre on emergency basis on the outskirts of the city to keep any confirmed cases of the disease away from densely populated areas.

Any patient testing positive for the virus will be isolated at the proposed centre instead of being shifted to a state-run hospital. The decision was taken on the recommendations of senior medical experts who had remarked that an outbreak of coronavirus in Pakistan could not be ruled out as it was spreading fast in neighbouring China, an official told Dawn.

For the establishment of the treatment centre, he said, the government had constituted an eight-member committee of senior medics and health experts and tasked it with identifying the health facilities that could be converted into an isolation centre.

Punjab Health Services Director General Dr Haroon Jehangir, Services Hospital Lahore Medical Superintendent Dr Saleem Shahzad Cheema and Dengue Expert Advisory Group Chairperson Dr Somia Iqtedar are also members of the committee. Other members included head of the chest disease department at King Edward Medical University (KEMU), Prof Saqib Saeed; pulmonology department head at Services Hospital, Prof Kamran Cheema; Pakistan Kidney & Liver Institute and Research Centre (PKLI) Lahore Dean Dr Haif Ijaz Ahmad; and associate professor of infectious disease, medical unit-I at Services Hospital Lahore.

The committee has been directed to visit the rural areas of Lahore to identify the facilities, particularly in the surroundings of the airport, to establish the centre.

“If any hospital is found feasible for establishing the centre, the committee will furnish an action plan along with the timelines and required human resource, equipment etc,” reads a notification of the committee.

It will also recommend steps to be taken and modifications to be made to a health facility on emergency.

Meanwhile, four people with symptoms of flu and fever, including two Chinese nationals, were shifted to the Services Hospital from the airport where they were isolated for till cleared regarding the virus. The four were among 243 passengers who arrived at the Lahore airport on Thursday night.

A team of health and medical experts screened all the passengers and isolated four of them, an official told Dawn.

In a related development, the screening of all 4,000 Chinese engineers and experts working on various sites of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor across Punjab has been completed.

A report drafted and sent by the Special Protection Unit Deputy Inspector General Umar Sheikh to the provincial police chief stated that none of those tested carried the virus.

He said that on the recommendations of his unit, the health authorities had dispatched various teams of experts, which screened these Chinese and cleared them.

Published in Dawn, February 8th, 2020