JAVED KHAN
Thirty-four inbound passengers have been quarantined after trained dogs identified them as Covid-19 infected at Bacha Khan International Airport Peshawar here on Saturday.
According to the airport authority, the detection was made by sniffer dogs deployed at the Peshawar airport to check inbound passengers carries coronavirus infections.
The inbound passengers have been diagnosed COVID-19 at the airport who arrived in Pakistan from United Arab Emirates (UAE) through a flight PK218 carrying around 128 passengers.
The COVID-positive passengers have been handed over to the Peshawar district administration for quarantine.
In Bacha Khan International Airport a Labrador and a Belgian Shepherd at work sniffing out COVID-19 in inbound travelers with 100 percent accuracy, accompanied by their human medical teams, said Airport Manager Obaid-ur-Rehman Abbasi.
Sniffer dogs have been working in teams of two at the airport, as well as at the Torkham border crossing, to detect and alert medical teams about passengers carrying the virus into the province.
A couple of months ago, the authority of Bacha Khan International Airport deployed the sniffer dog teams at the airports as the third wave of coronavirus swept the whole country amid fears the highly transmissible Indian variant could arrive from across the border.
The dogs, officials say, not only reconfirm rapid tests taken at the airports but also stop travelers from arguing about the accuracy of the results.
Obaid-ur-Rehman Abbasi explained that the procedure of virus-positive person or persons is very simple and carried out in a short span of time.
The trained dogs at the airport sniff out the sample from metal funnels, and if they smell the virus, a medical team takes abrupt action and takes the identified persons for further investigation he added.
According to details, several government measures are being taken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus across the country, with the aim of protecting the public from the ravages of the epidemic.
After the incident the Peshawar Airport is being completely disinfected. Under SOP, all the lounges of the airport are sprayed with disinfectant after the transfer of Corona positive passengers to hospital.
It may be recalled that two days ago, trained sniffer dogs had identified coronavirus in 24 passengers.
KP recorded 13 deaths from coronavirus on Saturday, raising the province-wide fatalities due to the infection to 4216.
The province, during the last 24 hours, diagnosed 308 more patients, taking overall cases of the virus to 135877, according to health department report.
During the same period of time, Peshawar recorded four deaths from coronavirus, the death toll from the virus in the provincial capital has reached 2064.
54 more people have been infected with coronavirus in Peshawar, in the last 24 hours while the health department conducted around 9,678 new tests in one day.
