Lower Dir reports first Covid-19 case

TIMERGARA: The district administration on Saturday declared Madina Abad village in Ziarat Talash in Lower Dir district as a quarantine after the first Covid-19 case was reported in the district.

Zubaida, 60, wife of Mubarak Shah and resident of Madina Abad Ziarat Talash, had returned from Saudi Arabia on March 15 after performing Umrah.

Deputy District Health Officer (DDHO) Dr Irshad Ali, who is also the health department focal person for Covid-19 for the district, told The News that the patient developed chest pain and was taken to Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC), Peshawar, for treatment.

He said the patient was admitted to the HMC cardiology ward on March 24 and died at 1:30pm on March 25.

The doctors in HMC, he added, had taken swab from the deceased which was sent to the Public Health Reference Laboratory in Khyber Medical University for test.

The official said the result confirmed the deceased a Covid-19 positive case.

Deputy Commissioner Saadat Hassan said that the swabs had also been taken from the seven close relatives of the deceased and sent to the National Institute for Health (NIH), Islamabad.

“I personally visited the quarantined village in Ziarat Talash where contingents of security forces and police had been deployed. The villagers had been strictly restricted to their homes so that further spread of the outbreak could be controlled, the official said.

He added that the whole village with a populace of 2700 individuals had been sealed while shops for necessary daily use items would remain open in the larger public interest.

He claimed that the screening process being conducted at the main Chakdara entry point was far better than many other districts where police and army personnel were strictly monitoring the situation.