Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi tests COVID positive, quarantined at home

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has tested positive for COVID-19 and has quarantined himself at home amid rising cases of coronavirus in the country. Qureshi took to Twitter to inform about his health, saying he felt mild fever in the afternoon and immediately quarantined himself at home, adding that he will continue to perform his duties from there. 

Qureshi is the latest senior Pakistani politician to test positive for the novel coronavirus after Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’ brother Shehbaz Sharif, who leads the opposition party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), tested positive in late June. PML-N leader Ataullah Tarar Ataullah Tarar had then blamed Prime Minister Imran Khan and National Accountability Bureau (NAB) for putting the life of Sharif in danger.

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Visa restrictions on Pak

Pakistan has been witnessing exponential growth in the number of coronavirus cases and has reported over 221,000 cases with more than 4,500 deaths so far, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. Recently, the South Korean government announced flight and visa restrictions from Pakistan and Bangladesh after the country witnessed a surge in coronavirus cases imported from these two nations. 

The authorities have restricted issuing visas for people travelling from these two countries, except for diplomatic and urgent business purposes. The new precautionary measures came into effect from June 21 and non-scheduled flights from these countries have also been temporarily banned. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has also temporarily suspended receiving passengers from Pakistan until a special COVID-19 lab is set up to test them.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that the countries not taking the pandemic seriously and refusing to allocate resources to combat the health emergency will face a “long and hard road ahead”. During a virtual press briefing, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accused some nations of adopting a fragmented approach in combating the novel coronavirus.

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