ISLAMABAD: Forty Pakistani students were among 183 people returned from China on Monday.
A private airlines’ flight QR 632, carrying 40 Pakistani students, who were stranded in China due to coronavirus outbreak, reached Islamabad on Monday after temporary suspension of flight operation to the neighboring country.
These students were allowed to go to their homes following complete medical checkup.
It is to be mentioned here that the first direct flight landed in Islamabad from China were having 61 Pakistanis.
The authorities told that a total of 183 people including 11 Chinese have arrived in Pakistan on different flights.
On Friday, Pakistan had halted flights to and from China with immediate effect, a civil aviation official said, as the death toll from a virus outbreak spreading in China mounted and the World Health Organization called it a global health emergency.
Read more: Coronavirus threat; Emergency declared in KP
Earlier, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Health Services Dr Zafar Mirza said Pakistan was fully capable of diagnosing coronavirus after China sent approximately 1,000 kits to Pakistan to detect the deadly disease.
On the other hand, China’s death toll from the coronavirus epidemic further increased on Monday, with deepening global concern about the outbreak and governments closing their borders to people from China.
The fresh toll came a day after China imposed a lockdown on a major city far from the epicentre and the first fatality outside the country was reported in the Philippines.
Authorities in Hubei, the province at the epicenter of the outbreak, reported 56 new fatalities, with one reported in the southwestern megalopolis of Chongqing. That took the toll in China to 361, exceeding the 349 mainland fatalities from the 2002-3 SARS outbreak.
Read more: Coronavirus outbreak; Pakistan resumes China flight operations after three days
