KARACHI: Sindh Minister for Information Syed Nasir Hussain Shah said on Thursday that the coronavirus test kits provided to the Sindh government were declared substandard by medical experts and not by the Sindh government.
According to the provincial minister, these test kits were not generating accurate results. He said that when the test kits would not give the correct result, how would it be exactly known how far the coronavirus had spread or what should be the treatment of the patient.
Shah said that although the Sindh government had no role in the whole affair, but even then, the Sindh government was accused of point-scoring. The provincial information minister said that the same substandard test kits were also provided to Punjab, therefore, they had reservations about the coronavirus tests conducted in Punjab.
He said that from the very first day when the first case of coronavirus came to light, the practice was that every good step taken by the Sindh government was first criticised, then exactly the same steps were followed by all other provinces.
Shah said that from the very beginning the Sindh government had been requesting to formulate a joint strategy, because the Sindh government believed that the complete elimination of the pandemic was only possible in cooperating with each other and taking precautionary measures according to standards set by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
He lamented that what the provincial government said about it was not taken seriously at all. He said that the situation could have been different today if the opinion of the Sindh government of formulating a joint strategy had been given importance.
Shah further said that because the health and lives of the people were first and foremost important to the Sindh government, therefore, no decision to end the lockdown was under consideration so far.
The provincial minister said that they should all be aware that the coronavirus was a reality, adding that “everyone of us had to avoid everything that could be the possible cause of its spread”.
He said that since there was no vaccine for the virus, the only way to prevent infection was not to go out of homes unnecessarily and to be as careful as possible.
