Islamabad: Pakistan has reported about 1000 cases of coronavirus that has subsequently forced the country to cease domestic flight operations. The government said that seven people have died of the pandemic.
The domestic flight ban will begin on Thursday, civil aviation spokesman Abdul Sattar Khokhar said on Wednesday. Islamabad had previously stopped train service and international flights.
However, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has denied to impose a country-wide lockdown and asked the people to go in self-quarantine.
He claimed that a lockdown in his country would impact the economy as twenty-five percent of the population are under poverty.
“Twenty-five percent of the population of our country lives under the poverty line. Putting the country under lockdown would mean that my daily-wage workers, street vendors, small shop-owners would be locked inside their homes. How would they earn then?” he said in his address to the nation.
Meanwhile, the Sindh provincial government has imposed a lockdown to curb the spread of the deadly virus. More than 400 of the infected people are in the southern province of Sindh.
