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Pak PM Sharif appears before Panama Papers probe panel

Agencies
June 15, 2017

Islamabad, Jun 15: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif today appeared before a Supreme Court-appointed team probing the Panamagate graft case, becoming Pakistan's first sitting premier to depose before such a panel.

nawazA seemingly-relaxed Sharif arrived at the Judicial Academy - which has been temporarily turned into the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) secretariat - amid tight security.

According to official sources, more than 2,500 security personnel have been deployed.

The 67-year-old PML-N leader, who was accompanied by his eldest son Hussain Nawaz, brother Punjab Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif and son-in-law Muhammad Safdar, waved at party workers and responded to their chants before entering the building.

A large number of PML-N supporters had assembled near the JIT secretariat, waiving their party flags and chanting pro- Nawaz slogans.

"The day that creates history & sets a much required & welcome precedent for others to emulate," Sharif's daughter Maryam Nawaz tweeted along with pictures of the PML-N leader and his top aides just before leaving for the JIT.

Dawn reported that the prime minister will face the 6- member JIT panel alone. It was not known for how long the JIT will question him.

The JIT chief Wajid Zia had summoned the prime minister to appear before the probe team on June 15 with all documents relevant to the case.

The summons was issued to Sharif, 67, after he returned last Saturday from Kazakhstan where he had attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit.

In its judgement of April 20 in the Panama Papers case, the Supreme Court had constituted a JIT and empowered it to summon the prime minister, his sons and any other person necessary, to investigate allegations of money-laundering, through which the four apartments in London's posh Park Lane area were purchased.

Sharif has denied any wrongdoing.

The Joint Investigation Team had questioned Sharif's sons -- Hussain and Hasan -- last month over the family's alleged improper business dealings.

His eldest son Hussain was questioned five times while Hasan, the youngerson, was summoned twice.

The court last year took up the case and issued a split decision over allegations of money laundering when Sharif was prime minister in 1990s.

On May 5, the Supreme Court set up a high-level six- member JIT to probe Sharif and his sons' alleged corruption in the Panama Papers case.

The JIT is bound to complete the probe in 60 days unless it is granted additional time.

It is for the first time that a sitting prime minister is appearing before a high-level probe team traditionally constituted to investigate high-profile criminal cases.

The JIT probing the offshore holdings of Prime Minister Sharif and his children has also summoned his younger brother and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, to appear before it on June 17.

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Agencies
August 5,2020

Ninety per cent of a sample group of coronavirus-recovered patients from a prominent hospital in China's Wuhan city where the pandemic broke out have reported lung damage and five per cent of them are again in quarantine after testing positive for the virus, according to a media report on Wednesday.

A team at the Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University led by Peng Zhiyong, director of the hospital's Intensive Care Unit, has been conducting follow-up visits with '100 recovered patients' since April.

The first phase of this one-year programme finished in July. The average age of the patients in the study is 59.

According to the first phase results, 90 per cent of the patients' lungs are still in a damaged state, which means their lungs ventilation and gas exchange functions have not recovered to the level of healthy people, state-run Global Times reported.

Peng's team conducted a six-minute walking test with the patients. They found that the recovered patients could only walk 400 metres in six minutes while their healthy peers could walk 500 metres in the same period.

Some recovered patients have to rely on oxygen machines even three months after being discharged from the hospital, Liang Tengxiao, a doctor from the Dongzhimen Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, was quoted as saying by the report.

Liang's team is also conducting follow-up visits with recovered patients aged above 65.

The results also showed that antibodies against the novel coronavirus in 10 per cent of the 100 patients have disappeared.

Five per cent of them received negative results in Covid-19 nucleic acid tests but positive results in Immunoglobulin M (IgM) tests, and thus have to be quarantined again, the report said.

IgM is usually the first antibody produced by the immune system when a virus attacks. A positive result in an IgM test usually means that a person has just been infected by the virus.

It is still unclear if this means these people have been infected again.

The 100 patients' immune systems have not fully recovered as they showed a low level of B cells -- - a primary force for killing viruses in the human body -- but a high level of T cells which only recognise viral antigens outside infected cells.

"The results revealed that the patients’ immune systems are still recovering," Peng said.

The patients also suffered from depression and a sense of stigma. Most of the recovered patients told the team that their families were not willing to have dinner with them at the same table, the report said.

Less than half of the recovered patients have returned to work, it said.

The findings are significant as the coronavirus first emerged in Wuhan city.

Hubei province for which Wuhan is the provincial capital has reported a total of 68,138 confirmed Covid-19 cases till now. The disease has claimed 4,512 lives in the province, according to the official data.

China reported 27 new confirmed Covid-19 cases on Tuesday, including 22 locally-transmitted cases, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Wednesday.

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News Network
February 22,2020

Feb 22: A 20-year-old Chinese woman from Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, travelled 400 miles(675 km) north to Anyang where she infected five relatives, without ever showing signs of infection, Chinese scientists reported on Friday, offering new evidence that the virus can be spread asymptomatically.

The case study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, offered clues about how the coronavirus is spreading, and suggested why it may be difficult to stop.

"Scientists have been asking if you can have this infection and not be ill? The answer is apparently, yes," said Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, who was not involved in the study.

China has reported a total of 75,567 cases of the virus known as COVID-19 to the World Health Organization (WHO) including 2,239 deaths, and the virus has already spread to 26 countries and territories outside of mainland China.

Researchers have reported sporadic accounts of individuals without any symptoms spreading the virus. What's different in this study is that it offers a natural lab experiment of sorts, Schaffner said.

"You had this patient from Wuhan where the virus is, travelling to where the virus wasn't. She remained asymptomatic and infected a bunch of family members and you had a group of physicians who immediately seized on the moment and tested everyone."

According to the report by Dr Meiyun Wang of the People's Hospital of Zhengzhou University and colleagues, the woman travelled from Wuhan to Anyang on Jan. 10 and visited several relatives. When they started getting sick, doctors isolated the woman and tested her for coronavirus. Initially, the young woman tested negative for the virus, but a follow-up test was positive.

All five of her relatives developed COVID-19 pneumonia, but as of Feb. 11, the young woman still had not developed any symptoms, her chest CT remained normal and she had no fever, stomach or respiratory symptoms, such as cough or sore throat.

Scientists in the study said if the findings are replicated, "the prevention of COVID-19 infection could prove challenging."

Key questions now, Schaffner said, are how often does this kind of transmission occur and when during the asymptomatic period does a person test positive for the virus.

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News Network
July 10,2020

Lahore, Jul 10: The Punjab government enforced smart lockdown in seven cities of the province for 15 days with an immediate effect from Thursday night, The News International reported.

The Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department on Thursday issued a notification under the Punjab Infectious Diseases Ordinance 2020, about enforcement of lockdown in Lahore, Multan, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Gujrat and Rawalpindi, till July 24 midnight.

In Lahore, the lockdown will be enforced in A2 Block Township, EME Society, Main Bazaar Chungi Amr Sadhu, Punjab Government Servants Housing Scheme, Wapda Town, C-Block Jauhar Town and Green City.

The basic necessities of life will remain available in smart lockdown areas. "The purpose of the smart lockdown is to minimise movement of people in hotspots of positive coronavirus cases," said Capt (retd) Muhammad Usman, Secretary, Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department.

The country registered 2,751 new COVID-19 cases during the last 24 hours, taking the tally to 243,599 on Friday. The province-wise breakup includes 85,261 cases in Punjab, 100,900 cases in Sindh, 29,406 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11,099 in Balochistan, 13,829 in Islamabad, 1,619 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 1,485 in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The death toll due to the virus reached 5,058 with 75 more deaths reported over the last 24 hours, as per data cited by Radio Pakistan.

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