PIA pilot, flight attendant test positive for Covid-19 – Newspaper

RAWALPINDI: A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) pilot and flight attendant have tested positive for Covid-19 in isolation at a hotel quarantine facility in Islamabad.

The pilot was taken to a quarantine center while the stewardess was isolated at the hotel.

PIA spokesman Abdullah Hafeez said of the 14 PIA crew members, five swab tests were positive and nine were negative and were allowed to return home.

Hafeez said a pilot and flight attendant who returned from Canada a day earlier were taken to a quarantine center and held in isolation, respectively, in Islamabad.

The two crew members were on board a special passenger flight from Karachi to Toronto on April 2 and returned to Islamabad on April 8.

They were taken to a quarantine facility established at a hotel in Islamabad with all the other crew members, where they both tested positive for Covid-19.

Mr. Hafeez said that the first PIA crew member to test positive for the disease was a flight tracker on March 20, who was taken to Benazir Bhutto Hospital and released after 22 days.

The Pakistan Airlines Pilots Association (Palpa) claimed on Twitter that the pilot who tested positive for Covid-19 on Sunday was "taken by the police as being arrested for a crime."

However, the PIA spokesperson said that according to standard operating procedure, every time a crew member is detected with symptoms, or needs to be quarantined or isolated, an ambulance is dispatched with a health team and the police to escort.

He said a similar SOP was adopted with another crew member who tested positive at Rawalpindi; An ambulance with a health team was dispatched to place him in isolation at his home in Rawalpindi on Sunday.

Posted in Dawn, April 13, 2020