Airline staff and ground service staff must wear masks. Authorities have instructed staff and passengers to disinfect their hands. PCAA has also instructed passengers to disinfect their baggage.
KARACHI: The Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) on Sunday directed all airlines flying to Pakistan from abroad to take precautions against monkeypox at airports after the country’s first case of the virus was recorded in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province earlier this week.
The new form of the virus appears to spread more easily through close, everyday contact, sparking global concern. Cases of the new variant were identified in Sweden on August 15 and have been linked to growing outbreaks in Africa, marking the first sign of the virus spreading outside the continent.
Health officials in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa announced on Friday one confirmed case of MPOX in the province, retracting an earlier statement that three cases who arrived from the United Arab Emirates had been detected in the province this week.
A KP provincial health official told Geo News that of the three MPOX cases reported so far, two were from patients who contracted the disease last year, while the other was due to a recent strain of the virus that emerged worldwide.
Meanwhile, in a set of directives, the PCAA has directed all airlines arriving from overseas to provide masks to passengers, “while wearing of masks is also mandatory for airline staff and ground handling service staff,” it said.
Authorities have instructed airlines to ensure hand sanitization for crew and passengers and have asked them to disinfect baggage as well.
Any passengers showing symptoms of monkeypox were ordered to be quarantined.
A health official in KP’s Mardan district said the whereabouts of the confirmed MPOX patient, a man who had reportedly returned from Saudi Arabia recently, was unknown.
Dr Javed Iqbal told Reuters he was initially examined and advised at a hospital in Peshawar but then returned to his home in Mardan, several hours away, before travelling to another district.
“When we visited his house in Mardan, it was locked from outside and neighbours told us that his family had left for Dir,” said Mardan health officer.
“We contacted our colleagues at the Dir district health department but they could not trace him there either.”
The Health Ministry said it was conducting contact tracing for the patient it identified, who is believed to be from Mardan, and had deployed additional medical personnel and stepped up surveillance and monitoring at the airport.
Federal Health Ministry spokesman Sajid Shah said no new variants have been identified so far, but genetic analysis of samples from confirmed patients was underway.
“Once that’s done, we’ll know what strain this is,” Shah said.