ISLAMABAD: National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Chairman Lt. Gen. Muhammad Afzal has said the country will start conducting 50,000 coronavirus tests per day starting next week,

Speaking to journalists, the NDMA chairman said that a meeting held at the National Command and Operations Center had decided that virus detection kits would be provided to all the concerned departments in the country to enhance testing capacity.

He added that earlier only those people underwent a test that showed symptoms of the virus; however, randomised testing will be done now.

The chairman added that at 800,000 kits were available and efforts were being made to procure more of them.

On April 11, the NDMA had received a medical consignment from China consisting of 59 ventilators, about 936kg of surgical masks, protective suits, safety lenses, thermometers, and 1,720 kg of unstitched cloth for surgical gowns, which were distributed to all provinces accordingly.

Earlier, Beijing had sent medical equipment such as PCR testing kits, mobile X-ray machines, Chinese KN95 masks, disposable medical masks and water-impermeable surgical gowns.