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A team of doctors from Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital collected samples from the Prime Minister. The result is expected on Wednesday.
“As a responsible prime minister and responsible citizen, I am pleased to announce that the prime minister has agreed to take the test on my advice,” Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital President Dr. Faisal Sultan was quoted by The Express Tribune.
Sultan, who is also Khan’s personal physician and focal point on COVID-19, told the media Tuesday that Khan will undergo the test.
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“Prime Minister Khan will undergo a coronavirus test to demonstrate that he is a responsible citizen of this county. We will follow all applicable protocols and make appropriate recommendations,” he said.
Information adviser Firdous Ashiq Awan said on Wednesday that the prime minister’s family had already tested negative.
Khan accepted the test after Faisal Edhi, son of the late philanthropist Abdul Sattar Edhi and president of the Edhi Foundation, met with him last week and has now tested positive for the coronavirus.
Sais, the son of Faisal Edhi, told the Dawn newspaper on Tuesday that his father started showing symptoms last week, shortly after meeting Khan in Islamabad on April 15.
“The symptoms lasted four days before it disappeared,” said Saad.
Faisal Edhi had met with Prime Minister Khan to deliver a check for Rs 10 million to the Prime Minister’s coronavirus relief fund.
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The Edhi Foundation was founded by the late Abdul Sattar Edhi and is the leading charity in Pakistan.
Khan will participate in an event on Thursday organized to collect donations to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
A total of 17 more people have died in Pakistan from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the number of deaths to 209. The number of coronavirus cases has increased to 9,749 with 533 new infections reported as of Wednesday, the Ministry of National Health Services has said.
The Pakistani province of Punjab has reported 4,328 cases, Sindh has 3,053, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 1,345, Balochistan 495, Gilgit-Baltistan 284, Islamabad 194 and Kashmir 51 occupied by Pakistan.
So far, 118,020 tests have been conducted across the country, including 5,647 in the past 24 hours.
Meanwhile, at least 492 Pakistanis, including 92 women, stranded in Afghanistan due to a coronavirus pandemic, have returned to their country from the Torkham border.
Authorities said 111 other children, not registered with them as stranded but traveling with their parents, mostly mothers, could also enter Pakistan, the Dawn newspaper reported.
