Coronavirus cases rise to 20 in Pakistan

The number of coronavirus cases in Pakistan have risen to 20 after a 14-year old boy was tested positive for COVID-19 in Gilgit Baltistan, a health official said on Wednesday.

Pakistan saw a sudden increase in coronavirus infections on Tuesday when a dozen new cases were reported across the country.

The health ministry official said that the latest case was reported from Skardu district.

The patient, who recently returned from Iran with his mother, showed symptoms of the virus and was immediately placed in quarantine with his family members, said Shah Zaman, a doctor.

He said the boy and his mother had arrived from Iran on February 25.

On Tuesday night, the first coronavirus case of Baluchistan was also confirmed in a 12-year-old boy.

The patient has recently travelled to Iran, said Noorullah Musakhail, the medical superintendent at Fatima Jinnah Hospital in Quetta.

The patients belongs to Sindh's Dadu district. Sindh has reported the highest number of COVID-9 cases in Pakistan.

Six traffic controllers, who worked at a Karachi airport, have been placed in quarantine after they were suspected of having contracted the novel coronavirus, Civil Aviation Authority spokesperson Abdus Sattar Khokhar said in a statement.

The suspected patients were posted at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi and have been isolated as per the standard operating procedure, Khokhar said.

He said the directions had been given to screen all staff members of air traffic control posted in Karachi for any symptoms of COVID19.

The total number of cases of the virus in Sindh have now reached 15 while one case was also reported from Hyderabad.

The patient in Hyderabad had visited Syria and returned home via Doha.

Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Zafar Mirza has said that the nine coronavirus cases confirmed on Monday evening were in a "stable clinical condition".

In a tweet, he added: "almost all of them are asymptotic".

"They all had travel history and were picked up during contact tracing of an existing COVID19 patient," Mirza said.

So far, no coronavirus related death has been reported in Pakistan. One of the COVID-19 patients in Karachi has recovered and was allowed to go home on Saturday.

The deadly virus that first originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December last year has claimed over 4,200 lives and infected more than 117,330 people across 107 countries and territories.

China remains the hardest-hit with more than 80,000 infections and 3,000 deaths.

The World Health Organisation raised the global virus risk to maximum level after the outbreak spread to sub-Saharan Africa and stock markets around the world plummeted.