Punjab authorities have been unable to trace the people who came in contact with the patients who tested positive for Covid-19. The number of people to be traced has reached up to more than 1000, and some of them unknowingly, might be carriers of the infection.
Geo.tv reported that according to the daily situation document dated April 26, by the Directorate of General Health Services in Punjab, 1,012 people have been identified as “to be traced” across the provinces. Of these, the largest number of people who must be tracked are in Lahore, 691, followed by Sialkot, 87, and Multan, 72.
The report has documented these people as “COVID-19 positive cases” and have also been included in the final tally of confirmed cases for Punjab on April 26.
But Mudasir Ahmed, the deputy secretary at Punjab’s specialized healthcare and medical education department, which generates these reports jointly with the primary and secondary healthcare department, said that the 1,000 plus cases were only suspects and not positive cases of the virus.
“As a preemptive measure, we consider suspected cases as positive, until they test negative,” Ahmed explained over the phone, “These are contacts of coronavirus patients who have yet to be traced. They are likely to be infected too.”
He also said that the location of these people and their phone numbers or addresses, are being gathered as of now. “We have a really big and successful mechanism in place for contact-tracing in Punjab.”
The director operations at the Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) Nisar Ahmed, also confirmed that these people were yet to be located. “We already know where all the positive cases are,” he said, “These are people who came into contact with confirmed patients and could also be carriers.”
On March 30, Ahmed said that the Punjab government is using cellphone data and artificial intelligence to track people in the province. He said that the provincial authorities can trace the movements of each one of the 11 million people in Lahore, Punjab’s capital city.
“Anyone who leaves the airport, we know exactly where there they went, where they stopped and for how many minutes. This state-of-the-art technology is being used in Punjab for the first time.”
