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  • COVID-19: Colony in Lahore under lockdown after massive increase in cases?

    Residents of Lahore’s Imamia Colony claim that the area has been sealed off by the police amid “a massive increase in the COVID-19 cases” as authorities told them to not leave their houses; however, both the government and police deny doing so.

    Reports quoted locals as saying that amid an increasing number of coronavirus cases in Punjab, especially Lahore, the government had put the residential area in the provincial capital under lockdown. They claimed that a fatality was also reported in the locality and the health department was “downplaying the situation”.

    The government, they said, had failed to screen people returning from Iran which led to the outbreak in the colony.

    “The health department is hiding the actual number of the cases,” the residents claimed, urging higher-ups to take notice of the cases.

    According to an audio clip viral on social media, a purported sub-inspector stationed at Shahdara Police Station could be heard telling someone to stay away from Imamia Colony due to a higher number of cases there. As per the clip, a patient also died of the virus and at least 80 per cent were infected in the colony.

    Shahdara Police denied this and said they didn’t seal the area, whereas the health secretary and his spokesperson remained unavailable despite many calls.

    Punjab government spokesperson Mussarat Jamsheed said it was all rumours. “All the areas are under observation and we are not hiding anything from the public,” the official said while asking people not to panic.

  • Rising batsman Haider Ali wants people to call him Babar Azam, not Virat Kohli

    Rising batsman Haider Ali wants people to call him Babar Azam, not Virat Kohli

    Haider Ali, the young Pakistan batsman, is widely tipped to be the next big player in the squad. He impressed everyone in the Under 19 World Cup and was also a star in the Pakistan Super League (PSL). He has the talent to take the next step forward and the right-hander wants to keep improving his game so that people can talk about him in the same vein as Babar Azam.

    “A batsman can never become like his role models but can improve himself and develop shots as they play. I want to improve myself to the extent that people call me Babar Azam and not Kohli because Babar has good shots,” Haider said in a video on YouTube.

    However, he then went on to add that he wants to keep learning and imbibe the good qualities of Virat Kohli as well. “I cannot become Kohli but can develop shots like him through practice. I’m Haider Ali so I can only become Haider Ali,” he further added.

    “I met Babar Azam during the first-class tournament and he gave me tips regarding my batting. We also get to learn a lot from him in the National Cricket Academy in Lahore. He also supported me during PSL by boosting my confidence and advising me to keep scoring runs and leave the rest to Allah Almighty,” the young batsman added.

    Ali, who smacked four fours and the same number of sixes, also became the youngest batsman to score a half-century — which came off just 31 balls — in HBL PSL’s history aged just 19 years.

  • VIDEO: PM Imran Khan rubbishes Maria B’s claims

    Prime Minister Imran Khan has said that does not know anything about designer Maria B and her husband’s case in which the couple was accused of criminal negligence after they sent their cook, tested positive for COVID-19, back to his village in Vehari.

    VIDEO: Renowned designer Maria B’s husband reportedly arrested for ‘criminal negligence’

    Speaking to journalists in a media talk, when asked why Maria B’s husband was given bail, PM Imran said, “I have no idea about this case. Neither do I know anything about it. And neither did anyone contact me.”

    He continued, “You are saying the right thing but you need to understand that this [coronavirus] is a new thing. People don’t know much about it. It will take them time to understand the gravity of the situation.”

    Watch video:

    https://www.instagram.com/p/B-PelNEJRVO/

    Earlier it was being speculated that PM Imran had helped Maria B’s husband secure bail after Maria after she thanked him and the army in her clarification video, which has since then been deleted. While Maria B and her husband claim that they were harassed by the police, the police say that the couple sent back their ill cook to his village despite knowing that he had been tested positive for COVID-19. The police added that the cook travelled by public transport possibly infecting thousands. They also had to quarantine his village in order to ensure that no one other person had contracted the virus.

    In case you missed it, watch Maria and her husband’s clarification here:

    https://www.facebook.com/730157957365626/videos/555220218435492/
  • ‘Ishrat – Made in China’ cast & crew stranded in Thailand

    ‘Ishrat – Made in China’ cast & crew stranded in Thailand

    The cast and crew of the upcoming film Ishrat – Made in China are stranded in Thailand due to the outbreak of the coronavirus.

    Speaking to multiple media outlets, Shamoon Abbasi confirmed that he and other members of the cast including Sanam Saeed, Sara Loran and Mohib Mirza are stuck in Thailand along with their crew. He said that due to the non-availability of flights and closure of airspaces across the world, including Pakistan, they were unable to come back home. He added that they have requested Pakistani authorities to facilitate them.

    Meanwhile, other members of the cast such as Mani and Hasan Sheheryar Yasin had returned to Pakistan before the country was put under lockdown.

    Earlier, Abbasi had shared a video of himself at Dubai airport while heading to Thailand, asserting that there is no need to panic.

    https://www.instagram.com/tv/B9pS1-4piZr/?utm_source=ig_embed

    Read more – Amid coronavirus pandemic, Pakistani actors head to Thailand for film shoot

    Ishrat – Made in China will mark the directorial debut of Mohib Mirza. The lead cast includes Sanam Saeed, Shamoon Abbasi and Mani among others. No further details about the project have been revealed as yet.

  • Two Punjab doctors treating coronavirus patients get infected

    Two more Pakistani doctors have been confirmed to have contracted the novel coronavirus while treating patients, Geo reported.

    Punjab’s Primary and Secondary Health Care Department said on Friday that two doctors involved in the fight against coronavirus had tested positive for the disease.

    The spokesperson for the department stated that the doctors had been performing their duties at a quarantine centre in Dera Ghazi Khan when they started showing symptoms associated with COVID-19.

    Both doctors have since been confined to an isolation ward and are out of danger, added the statement.

    Earlier, a doctor had lost his life in Gilgit-Baltistan while performing his duties at one of the quarantine centres in the region.

    Meanwhile, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Pakistan rose to 1,257 on Friday after more people tested positive in Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Islamabad.

    The country also recorded its ninth death due to the virus while at least 24,000 deaths have been recorded globally, more than 15,500 of which are in Europe since the virus first emerged in December.

    More than 532,000 declared virus cases have been registered in 199 countries and territories of which at least 268,191 are in Europe, the worst-hit continent.

    The countries with the most deaths include Italy with 8,165 deaths out of 80,539 declared infections, Spain with 4,089 deaths out of 56,188 cases, mainland China with 3,287 deaths out of 81,285 cases, Iran with 2,234 deaths out of 29,406 cases, and France with 1,696 fatalities out of 29,155 cases.

  • Fawad says ignorance of conservative religious class, not coronavirus, god’s wrath

    Fawad says ignorance of conservative religious class, not coronavirus, god’s wrath

    Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry has said that God’s wrath “was the ignorance of the conservative religious class that had led to the coronavirus outbreak in Pakistan”.

    “The global outbreak of coronavirus has spread in Pakistan due to ignorance of the religious community and now they say coronavirus is a punishment from God and we need to repent,” he tweeted.

    He added that scholars who have the knowledge and the intellect were blessings of Allah, but to give an ignorant status of a scholar was destruction.

    “66 studies are going on in which 43 are on new vaccines, 16 on new antibiotics and seven are focusing on antibodies,” the minister said later.

    On Wednesday, several of Pakistan’s senior religious leaders announced that they would keep mosques open for group prayers, on a day when the country’s confirmed cases of COVID-19 crossed the 1,000 mark.   

    The declaration seemed to counter an announcement from President Arif Alvi that upon his request, Egypt’s Al-Azhar University’s religious clerics’ council issued a fatwa — an Islamic religious edict — that public gatherings, including group prayers in mosques, can be banned in the interest of public health. 

    The Cairo-based university is one of the oldest seats of Islamic learning, founded almost a century before Oxford University, the oldest university in the English-speaking world. 

    The Pakistani clerics said young children, old people, those who were sick or taking care of the sick could stay home. They also guided their followers to install sanitizers at the entrances of mosques, and advised more cleanliness.

  • Bilal Abbas Khan shares the three things he cannot live without

    Bilal Abbas Khan shares the three things he cannot live without

    There is not much known about Bilal Abbas Khan given his quiet persona and introvert nature. The phenomenal actor, who blows away his fans with his performances, rarely makes any public appearances and shies away from giving interviews. Considering how self-isolation is making all of us do things out of our comfort zone, the Bilal in a rare move decided to hold an Instagram question and answer session in which he answered his fans questions giving us a sneak peek into who he is as a person.

    Bilal shared that the three things he cannot live without are his family, work and lots of sleep.

    Bilal with his brothers:

    https://www.instagram.com/p/B463PbgFiMD/
    https://www.instagram.com/p/Bz-TpTulrMD/

    When asked which character is his favourite, Wajih from Cheekh, Taimoor from Balaa or Behram from the telefilm Laal, Bilal said that though he likes all characters, if he had to choose one, he’d choose Wajih.

    That makes the two of us.

    The actor’s favourite food is biryani.

    He also revealed his high while growing up.

    Does this mean Bilal is no longer single?

    We’re one step closer to knowing the actor who likes to remain behind the scenes.

  • PICTURES: Social distancing in Pakistan

    After the outbreak of coronavirus, health experts have urged people to stay at home and practice social distancing. Social distancing involves “remaining out of mass settings, avoiding mass gatherings, and maintaining distance” whenever possible to limit the ability of the virus to spread.

    Section 144 has also been imposed in Pakistan under which more than four people cannot gather together in an area.

    Considering essential activities cannot completely be closed, here’s how Pakistanis are maintaining social distance at grocery stores, banks and police stations:

    Social distancing in Hangu, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
    A police station in Lahore
    Mithi, Sindh.
  • Pakistan blamed for spread of coronavirus to Muslim World

    Pakistan blamed for spread of coronavirus to Muslim World

    The first two cases of the new coronavirus in the Gaza Strip — a war-shattered Palestinian territory with a fragile health system — were confirmed in men who attended a mass religious gathering 10 days ago in Pakistan, United States’ (US) National Public Radio (NPR) has quoted an Islamabad-based Palestinian diplomat as saying.

    The diplomat said the men were part of a two-day gathering that ended March 12. The gathering of the Tablighi Jamaat, a global Muslim missionary group, brought together tens of thousands of preachers from some 80 countries and raised concerns about the virus’ spread in Pakistan and beyond.

    The Pakistani authorities had urged for the cancellation of the five-day Tablighi Ijtema congregation hosted annually near Lahore but organisers from the movement had ignored government advice to postpone, The News reported.

    A longtime Pakistani Tablighi Jamaat member, Arif Rana, said the gathering was canceled on March 12 because of rain — attendees sleep in the open. But Azhar Mashwani, focal person to the Punjab chief minister (CM) on digital media, said that it ended because of coronavirus fears.

    Most attendees were Pakistani, but at least a few thousand came from other countries, Rana told NPR.

    Omar al-Tabatibi said his 79-year-old grandfather, Mohammed, and friend Amer Doghmosh had attended the Lahore event.

    Previous statements from health officials had misidentified the men as being between 30 and 40. “My grandfather learnt about the conference by chance from a friend while he was in Pakistan so he wanted to attend,” Tabatibi said.

    After returning from Pakistan, his grandfather stayed several days in Egypt before taking the long journey overland to Gaza, Tabatibi said. “Maybe, my grandfather caught corona in Egypt and not Pakistan, no one knows,” he added.

    Five preachers from Kyrgyzstan stayed in a mosque in Islamabad after attending the Tablighi Jamaat gathering and have also tested positive, said a senior health official who did not want to be named because he was not authorised to speak to the press.

    On Twitter, Muhammad Hamza Shafqaat, the deputy commissioner of Islamabad, accused the Kyrgyz group of “criminal carelessness” because “they knew that one of them had symptoms and they kept on roaming around”.

    Concerns have also been raised in Southeast Asia about infection after a Tablighi Jamaat gathering outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in late February and early March. Malaysian media reported that more than half of the country’s known coronavirus cases were traced to the gathering. Preachers who attended also spread the virus to Brunei and Thailand, The New York Times reported, saying the gathering created “the largest known viral vector in Southeast Asia”.

  • CM Balochistan wants you to clap your hands

    CM Balochistan wants you to clap your hands

    Chief Minister of Balochistan, Jam Kamal wants people to support their doctors and medical staff by coming out on their balconies, roofs, and windows, clapping their hands and flashing their mobile lights to appreciate the doctors working to help people during the coronavirus pandemic.

    The CM is not wrong. Different countries have been using this technique to give moral support to their medical workers.

    People clap from their windows in support of medical staff in Paris, France
    Photograph: Omar Havana/Getty Images
    A woman applauds doctors and nurses fighting coronavirus as part of a nationwide initiative to show unity and support in Sofia, Bulgaria
    Photograph: Dimitar Kyosemarliev/Reuters
    Family members applaud from their balconies during a call on social media to thank Spanish medical staff in Ronda, Spain
    Photograph: Jon Nazca/Reuters
    A man plays the violin from a balcony to raise morale in Berlin, Germany
    Photograph: Paweł Kopczyński/Reuters
    People hold up their smartphones on a balcony as part of nationwide flash mob to light up Rome, Italy
    Photograph: Alberto Lingria/Reuters