IS chief Baghdadi escapes Iraqi Army's final assault: UK

Islamabad, May 9: A female doctor posted at Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) Mother and Child Hospital (MCH), who was tested Covid-19 positive, has exposed Pakistan's mismanagement in handling the patients affected with the deadly virus.

Identified herself as Dr. Sharbat, she made a video of herself locked in an isolated room when the authorities failed to provide any medical assistance to her.

According to Pakistani media, the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) Mother and Child Hospital (MCH) and the operating theatre in the Children's Hospital were sealed on Tuesday after 15 people from both facilities were diagnosed with Covid-19.

Dr. Sharbat said that despite having Covid-19 symptoms after her colleague doctor was tested positive, she was forced to perform duty by the hospital authorities.

After she tested positive, Dr. Sharbat has isolated herself in a room and has requested the hospital authorities to provide her a bed in the hospital.

She said, "I am isolated in a small room. There is no toilet and other facilities at this place. I have requested the authorities several times to provide me proper bed because I cannot go home as my son and father is there. I have no other place to go. Its been several hours now and the administration is busy doing meetings. They have no idea about my location. I have called the concerned officials several times and requested for a room in the hospital, but they said that they are looking for it. This is the kind of arrangements we have that a doctor, who was serving the patients, is not able to get proper care".

Dr Sharbat said that she is feeling depressed after seeing the response of authorities tackling with Covid-19 crisis in the country.

She added, "It is unfortunate that the government salutes [health professionals] but is not willing to provide isolation rooms."

Pakistan's position in the global ranking in respect of Covid-19 dropped from 24th to 22nd after the number of positive cases increased to 26,806 (till May 08) with the addition of 1,791 new cases.

However, the National Coordination Committee (NCC), chaired by Prime Minister Imran Khan, had decided to substantially ease the lockdown from Saturday after detailed deliberations and consultations with the provinces.

Jun 9: The World Health Organization says it still believes the spread of the coronavirus from people without symptoms is “rare,” despite warnings from numerous experts worldwide that such transmission is more frequent and likely explains why the pandemic has been so hard to contain.

Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO''s technical lead on COVID-19 said at a press briefing on Monday that many countries are reporting cases of spread from people who are asymptomatic, or those with no clinical symptoms.

But when questioned in more detail about these cases, Van Kerkhove said many of them turn out to have mild disease, or unusual symptoms.

Although health officials in countries including Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere have warned that COVID-19 is spreading from people without symptoms, WHO has maintained that this type of spread is not a driver of the pandemic and is probably accounts for about 6 per cent of spread, at most.

Numerous studies have suggested that the virus is spreading from people without symptoms, but many of those are either anecdotal reports or based on modeling.

Van Kerkhove said that based on data from countries, when people with no symptoms of COVID-19 are tracked over a long period to see if they spread the disease, there are very few cases of spread.

“We are constantly looking at this data and we''re trying to get more information from countries to truly answer this question,” she said. “It still appears to be rare that asymptomatic individuals actually transmit onward.”

Seoul, Jun 16: North Korea blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border on Tuesday, the South's Unification Ministry said, after days of increasingly virulent rhetoric from Pyongyang.

"North Korea blows up Kaesong Liaison Office at 14:49," the ministry, which handles inter-Korean relations, said in a one-line alert sent to reporters.

The statement came minutes after an explosion was heard and smoke seen rising from the long-shuttered joint industrial zone in Kaesong where the liaison office was located, Yonhap news agency reported citing unspecified sources.

Its destruction came after Kim Yo Jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said at the weekend: "Before long, a tragic scene of the useless north-south joint liaison office completely collapsed would be seen."

Since early June, North Korea has issued a series of vitriolic condemnations of the South over activists sending anti-Pyongyang leaflets over the border -- something defectors do on a regular basis.

Last week it announced it was severing all official communication links with South Korea.

The leaflets -- usually attached to hot air balloons or floated in bottles -- criticise North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for human rights abuses and his nuclear ambitions.

Analysts say Pyongyang may be seeking to manufacture a crisis to increase pressure on Seoul while nuclear negotiations with Washington are at a standstill.

Earlier Tuesday, North Korea's army said it was "fully ready" to take action against the South, included re-entering areas that had been demilitarised under an inter-Korean agreement.

"North Korea is frustrated that the South has failed to offer an alternative plan to revive the US-North talks, let alone create a right atmosphere for the revival," said Cheong Seong-chang, a director of the Sejong Institute's Center for North Korean Studies.

"It has concluded the South has failed as a mediator in the process."