Pakistan resumes flights to China after halt over coronavirus outbreak

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Monday resumed all flights to and from China, after putting them on hold for nearly a week due to the deadly coronavirus outbreak, according to Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority.

Two flights landed at Islamabad airport from China Monday morning carrying a total of 155 passengers, the aviation division said in a statement. 

“94 passengers in first flight while 61 people arrived via second flight,” the statement added.

State Minister for Health, Dr. Zafar Mirza, visited the Islamabad airport to review the screening arrangements for the arriving passengers which comprised both Pakistanis and Chinese nationals. 

On January 29, Pakistan suspended all flights to and from China in the wake of coronavirus spread which has killed more than 250 people across the world.

According to the CAA, there are at least 22 non-stop flights between China and Pakistan on a weekly basis – two of them by Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and 10 each by Air China and China Southern Airlines.

About 28,000 Pakistani students are currently enrolled in Chinese universities, with more than 500 of them in Wuhan – the epicenter of the outbreak – data shared by the Foreign Office showed.

In a series of Twitter posts on Sunday, Mirza said that Pakistan was acting responsibly by not evacuating its citizens from virus-hit areas in China, to stem the global spread of the disease.

“To the families of the Pakistani students in China: we fully understand your anxiety. Rest assured that we are working very hard to ensure their safety & wellbeing. And we are very closely monitoring the situation,” Mirza tweeted.

“We want to act responsibly in order not to become a reason for the global spread of #Coronarivus. WHO currently does not recommend evacuation. Our own risk assessment, WHO’s stance & China’s effective outbreak response are the reasons for our current decision at the present time,” he added in a separate Twitter post.

There are no confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Pakistan yet, he said, before listing several preventative measures.

He also announced that Pakistan had received 1,000 testing kits from China and was now equipped to diagnose the virus, with samples taken from across the country for testing at the National Institute of Health in Islamabad.