QUETTA: A top-level meeting of the provincial government was informed on Thursday that a Pakistan Army medical battalion comprising doctors and other staff had been deployed at Pakistan-Iran border town of Taftan and Hazarganji area to perform medical check-up of all pilgrims and businessmen returning from the neighbouring country to detect symptoms of coronavirus.

The Director General of Provincial Disaster Management Authority, Mr Imran Zarkoon, informed the meeting that the PDMA had established a tent village comprising 2,500 tents in Taftan in which around 2,376 pilgrims, out of 3,300 who recently returned from Iran, had been accommodated.

He said that fabricated rooms were being prepared on an emergency basis which would be used as isolation wards whenever needed.

The health secretary informed the meeting that 10 rooms and 50 beds wards were being set up in Sheikh Zayed Hospital’s hostel in Phase One and isolation wards were being set up in Fatima Jinnah Chest and General Hospital.

Similar steps, he said, were being taken in Dalbandin, Chaman and Gwadar to provide medical check-up facilities to people coming from or going to Afghanistan while a quarantine facility would be set up for at least 1,500 people in Chaman.

Published in Dawn, March 13th, 2020