800 return to Yarkhun from cities after coronavirus outbreak

BANG (YARKHUN): Around 800 people have returned to Yarkhun from different cities of Pakistan since the outbreak of coronavirus about a month ago.

Under government directions, the returnees were first kept at a quarantine centre in Booni. But the administration had no resources to provide them food and other facilities.

As a result, the district administration approached Aga Khan Regional Council Upper Chitral seeking its cooperation to manage quarantine centres set up in government schools and other buildings in different villages.

The Aga Khan Local Councils Brep and Bang are managing quarantine centres in Brep, Bang, Dewser and Sholkoch villages etc.

A representative of the council in Bang told ChitralToday that they registered about 800 people, mostly labourers and students, returning from urban areas.

The council arranges food, bedding and other facilities in the quarantine centres for the returnees on the request of the district administration, he added.

Some of the returnees do not want to stay in the centres and in that case the council takes an undertaking from them stating that they will self-isolate themselves in their homes.

Once in their homes, volunteers monitor them and in case the returnees start meeting people and roaming in their villages they are reported back to the council.

He said Aga Khan Agency for Habitat (AKAH) was providing food items to the council for the inmates of the quarantine centres.

After completion of the two weeks, the returnees are allowed to go home after being checked by a doctor. So far, he added, two of the returnees were sent to Mastuj after they started coughing and complained of breathlessness.

But the doctors at Mastuj after necessary tests sent them home, he added.