Pakistan shuts schools, suspends Iran flights

Reuters, Islamabad
Pakistan yesterday shut schools in several areas and suspended flights to and from Iran to try to stop the spread of new coronavirus, after reporting its first cases of the infection, officials said.

The South Asian nation bordering China and Iran, both of which have been hit hard by the virus, reported its first two cases on Wednesday.

Both people had recently travelled to Iran as part of large groups of pilgrims from Pakistan's Shia Muslim community. Health officials have said both were "stable."

Authorities shut schools in the southern province of Sindh, including the country's largest city Karachi where the first case was reported, and the southwestern province of Baluchistan, which borders Iran. They also began to trace nearly 8,000 pilgrims who recently returned to the country from Iran.

Pakistan's Civil Aviation said it was suspending all flight operations with Iran starting from Thursday evening till further notice. "We have decided to close the flights with Iran," the aviation's spokesman Sattar Khokhar told Reuters.

Three Iranian carriers run seven flights a week to and from Pakistan.

Pakistan closed its border with Iran on Sunday following the outbreak in the neighbouring country. 22 people have died so far from the new coronavirus in Iran.

Sindh's Provincial Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah said the 28 pilgrims whom the first cases were part of had been traced and would be scanned and monitored.

"We're going to the next step," he told a news conference in Karachi, adding that the Sindh government was out to trace all the 1,500 people who had returned to his province from Iran in the month of February. There are a total 8,000 such pilgrims across the country, he said.

"We're locating each one of them," Shah said.