Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah has said that as a nation our preparedness to contain the coronavirus threat is weak, unorganized and without national guidance.

"We are not prepared to face the [coronavirus] epidemic because the provinces, particularly Sindh, have been left alone to take decisions, whatever it wants, but there is no guidance from the federal government, and this is dangerous."

This he said on Thursday while participating in the meeting of Prime Minister's Special Assistant on Health Dr Zafar Mirza through a video link from CM House. The chief minister was assisted by Minister of Health Dr Azra Pechuho, Chief Secretary Mumtaz Shah, Advisor on Law Murtaza Wahab, PSCM Sajid Jamal Abro, Secretary of Health Dr Zahid Abbasi and Prof. Dr Faisal of the Aga Khan University Hospital.

Shah said that thousands of people were landing at the airports in Pakistan and our system did not diagnose them even if any of them had symptoms of influenza or fever. "The cases we have detected when they had been cleared from the airport," he said.

He said that 14 cases had been detected in Sindh because his dedicated team was running from pillar to post to find the people who have had travel history and even go for their contacts.

The chief minister said that the matters pertaining to the closing of borders, closing or opening of educational institutions, strict checking measures at the airports, quarantine arrangements, traveling of pilgrims from Taftan to the up-country were some of the decisions which would have been taken on the national level.

"Only Sindh and Balochistan have closed educational institutions, and we are also taking such decisions in isolation," he regretted. He said that 2,683 pilgrims from Pakistan were in quarantine at Taftan, Balochistan border, of them 853 belonged to Sindh who would start arriving in the province from Friday evening.

The chief minister said that 932 pilgrims of Sindh had been identified, and they all were in Iran. The meeting was told that so far the Sindh government had conducted 198 tests of the suspects, of them 184 were declared as negative and 14 as positive.

The chief minister said that all of the 14 cases were imported and there was no local transmission. He said out of 14 cases, eight have a travel history of Syria, three of Dubai and UK and three of Iran, but how many passengers had been checked from the countries other than Iran, he questioned.

Murad Ali Shah said that our health professionals who are dealing with the coronavirus cases were at risk and there was no national guidance for them. He urged the federal government to adopt zero-tolerance policy at the airports and all the passengers traveling to Sindh should be advised to be quarantined at home for 14 days.

Surveillance should be strengthened further, and the capacity of quarantine and isolation centres should also be enhanced, he said. The chief minister also urged the federal government to start a mass media awareness campaign for community engagement, and there was a dire need of multi-sector team work.

The PM's special assistant on Health said that another meeting would be held on Friday in which some important decisions would be taken. Task force meeting: In the 15th meeting of the task force held under the chairmanship of Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah it was disclosed that a Sindh government team with the support of airport authorities checked 3,063 passengers on Wednesday, of them one was found suspect. The suspect has been shifted to the hospital. The passenger had returned from Iraq.

The chief minister directed the health department to maintain a register of the passengers and collect health cards/travel cards from the passengers and feed them in the data base. He directed the chief secretary to depute at least eight data entry operators at the airport.

The health department on Thursday conducted 33 tests and all of the tests proved to be negative. The Commissioner of Sukkur told the chief minister that they had two suspects and their necessary medical investigation was taking place.

The chief minister directed the Commissioner of Karachi to test all the pilgrims coming from Taftan, Balochistan. He directed the health department to arrange testing kits for the purpose.