Sindh public laboratories to only conduct coronavirus tests for people with symptoms

Public laboratories in Sindh will only conduct coronavirus tests for people who exhibit symptoms of the virus, a notification said Thursday, as the province recorded 16 new deaths.

The notification said that people under the age of 60, who are not exhibiting symptoms, would not be tested at the province's public laboratories.

Explaining the reason behind the move, the notification said that the coronavirus testing kits in the laboratories were scant and that thousands of samples were still in the pipeline to get tested.

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According to the notification, people travelling abroad will not be tested either. Moreover, patients suffering from other diseases will not be tested.

"Tests of staff and students of educational institutions will be possible only if they exhibit symptoms," the notification added.

The development came hours after Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah said that the province had recorded 1,193 new infections, in the past 24 hours, lifting the total cases to 159,752.

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The chief minister added that 16 more coronavirus patients had died, taking the death toll to 2,780.

The province conducted a total of 14,470 tests in the past 24 hours, and the positivity rate stands at 8.2%, the chief minister said.