Chairman National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Lieutenant General Muhammad Afzal Saturday said the authority along with National Institute of Health (NIH) were working collectively to increase the existing number of coronavirus testing labs in the country and there are nearly 3500 ventilators available in hospital

Lieutenant General Afzal added that NDMA was going to provide testing kits and machines to three healthcare institutions in Karachi including SIUT, JPNC and Indus Hospital to set up testing labs. As Indus Hospital would primarily operate its testing facility in JPNC so two laboratories would be established at JPNC, he added.

Elaborating the status of existing labs, he said there was one lab working in Muzzafarabad, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), one out of order machine was fixed and sent back to Mirpur whereas two more testing machines were handed over to AJK.