Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) partially suspended flight operations to China over new cases of coronavirus as part of precautionary steps.
The suspension of flights to China was confirmed by the PIA Spokesperson.
All flights to and from China were suspended after 10 Pakistani passengers from China tested positive for coronavirus, according to the PIA spokesperson.
The PIA normally runs two flights within a week to China.
Cases spike
Mainland China is trying to contain the potential fresh wave of coronavirus cases ahead of the Lunar New Year next month as authorities on Sunday reported 109 new COVID-19 cases, most of them in Hebei province surrounding Beijing.
China reported the first new Covid-19 death since May and just in the past week, the country has seen the number of daily cases jump to an over 10-month high.
On Wednesday, Hebei registered 81 new coronavirus cases, taking the current number of cases to 463. On Wednesday, 43 new confirmed cases were registered in the northernmost province of Heilongjiang.
The spike in cases has emerged while a World Health Organization (WHO) team of investigators is in quarantine in the city of Wuhan, where the disease was first detected in late 2019 and Covid-19’s first recorded death in Wuhan was on January 11, 2020.
The WHO team that was initially blocked by China, arguing that their visas had not yet been accepted even as some group members were on their way, aims to investigate the origins of the pandemic that has now killed over 2 million people worldwide.
