‘Covid-19 is real, not a false scare’

Dr Javaid A Khan says violence could turn them reluctant to provide their services

KARACHI: Senior pulmonologist Dr Javaid A Khan urged people on Sunday to realise that the coronavirus was a real threat to their health and not an attempt to create a false scare across the globe. Taking exception to violence against doctors and medical personnel attending to patients at Covid-19 wards in Karachi, he claimed that the majority of the patients who had succumbed to the viral infection were those with malignant tumours, cancer, cardiac complication, severe chest infections or diabetes.

“People must understand that patients with chronic diseases coming to the hospitals have to be tested for Covid-19 due to their vulnerability to the infection,” he explained.

Trying to dispel the impression that patients suffering from different conditions are wrongly diagnosed with the virus, he appealed to people not to believe such rumours and to have faith in health workers, adding that violence could turn them reluctant to provide their services.