Dr Zafar confirms 31 deaths, 2291 positive cases

Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) on National Health Dr Zafar Mirza on Thursday confirmed 31 deaths from coronavirus across the country, and said that total 2,291 cases of coronavirus had been reported of which nine were serious.
Addressing a press conference here, he urged the people to share their ideas with the government to deal with the pandemic, saying that the government would welcome any effective idea to deal with the virus.
Giving the details, he said that 845 patients had been tested positive for the virus in Punjab, 743 in Sindh, 276 in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 187 in Gilgit-Baltistan, 169 in Balochistan, 62 in Islamabad, and nine in Azad Kashmir.
The SAPM added that so far, 107 patients had recovered in the country, while nine were in critical condition.
He said that there were 8,656 people in various quarantine centres across the country of which 5,634 had been tested, and so far only 1,122 results were "positive", which came to 20 percent of those quarantined.
Dr Mirza said that the government had decided to launch a campaign "Hackathon" to mitigate adverse impacts of coronavirus across the country with the help of researchers. He said during the campaign, various health experts could share their ideas and authentic information with the Ministry of Health by 14th of April and from 17th-19th April people selected through the process, would be provided a chance to demonstrate their skills and on 21st April short-listed people would be given their tasks.
Dr Mirza said new ideas were needed in getting proper information and checking "fake news", supply chain of various goods/services, hygiene-related ideas, keeping homes and cities clean, safety measures for health professionals, dealing with crowds in hospitals, testing of patients, looking after patients, and patient tracking related ideas.
He said that in that regard the government had launched a website and interested people could send their ideas at that website.
He further said the government was ensuring safety of the health workers, adding that a plan had been finalised to provide two-day crash training to doctors, nurses and paramedics directly dealing with the coronavirus patents, so that they could properly look after the patients.
The health workers in the first phase are being provided with self-protecting safety kits, and training programme for 5,000 health professionals is being started.
The minister maintained that the lockdown as per government policy across the country would continue till April 14, adding that globally one million cases had been confirmed, with over 47,000 deaths and almost 200,000 people had recovered from the disease.