• Staff of airlines, ground handling service ‘must’ wear masks.
• Authority instructs sanitising hands of staff and passengers.
• Luggage should also be disinfected, directs PCAA.

KARACHI: The Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) on Sunday directed all airlines flying into Pakistan from abroad to adopt preventive measures against monkeypox at the airports, as the country records first case of virus earlier this week in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

A new form of the virus has triggered global concern because it seems to spread more easily through routine close contact. A case of the new variant was confirmed on August 15 in Sweden and linked to a growing outbreak in Africa, the first sign of its spread outside the continent.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health authorities said on Friday that one mpox case had been confirmed in the province, withdrawing a previous statement that three mpox patients had been detected there this week on arrival from the United Arab Emirates.

The KP health authorities told Geo News that two of the three mpox cases previously reported were patients who contracted the disease last year, while one case is due to the recent strain of the virus all across the globe.

Meanwhile, in a set of instructions, the PCAA directed all the airlines arriving from abroad to provide masks to their passengers. “Whereas, it has been made mandatory for staff of the airlines and ground handling service as well to wear masks,” it said.

The authority instructed airlines to ensure sanitising hands of the staff and passengers, while their luggage should also be disinfected.

The passengers having symptoms of monkeypox should be isolated, it ordered.

A health officer in KP’s Mardan district had said the location of the confirmed mpox patient, a man the officer said had recently returned from Saudi Arabia, was unknown.

He had initially received tests and advice at a hospital in Peshawar, Dr Javed Iqbal had told Reuters, but later returned to his home a few hours away in Mardan and then went to another district.

“When we visited his home in Mardan, it was locked from outside and his neighbours told us that the family has left for Dir,” said the DHO Mardan.

“We approached our fellow colleagues of the health department in Dir district, but they couldn’t trace him even in Dir.”

The national health ministry had said it was carrying out contact tracing of the patient it had identified, who they said was from Mardan. They were also boosting airport surveillance and monitoring with extra health personnel, the ministry had stated.

Federal Ministry of Health spokesperson Sajid Shah had said so far they had no confirmation of the new variant, but the sequencing of the sample of the confirmed patient was underway.

“Once that’s done, we will be able to say what strain is this,” Shah had said.