Pakistan has suspended all domestic flight operations until April 2 to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus after the country reported over 1,000 cases and seven deaths from the Covid-19 infection, authorities said on Wednesday.

The nationwide tally of Covid-19 patients touched 1,037 with 413 cases in Sindh; 115 in Balochistan; 296 in Punjab; 117 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; 80 in Gilgit-Baltistan; 15 in Islamabad and one in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, The Express Tribune reported.

The National Disaster Management Authority has said that so far seven people have died because of the coronavirus and 18 have recovered. In the wake of the outbreak, the country has halted its domestic flights operations.

The ban will be effective from Thursday, Khokhar said.

According to a statement on the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority’s website on Tuesday, the government has “decided to suspend all types of domestic scheduled/non-scheduled, chartered and private aircraft passenger flight operations with effect from Thursday, March 26, at 6am up to April 02, 2020.”

Pakistan has already suspended international flights this week. However, cargo flights are exempted from the flight suspension ban.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday said that the homegrown cases of coronavirus were very limited but the threat of the spread of the infection was not yet over.

Addressing a meeting of parliamentary leaders of various parties via video conference, he said: “You would be happy to know that till yesterday only 153 cases were of local transmission and the rest were people who entered the country from abroad”.