Tracing the traveler’s impact on the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 cases in Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan

Abstract

The SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in Wuhan, China surfaced in December of 2019 and then has been reported in almost all countries of the world. Pakistan is also one of these countries, vulnerable to this deadly virus. We evaluated the reported cases of SARS-CoV-2 in Gilgit-Baltistan Pakistan. We obtained recent daily case report from Provincial emergency operation centre Gilgit Baltistan to find the pattern of occurrence of new cases from the first disease case reported on 13 th March 2020 to the 6 th April 2020. We determined the Correlation between the susceptible travelers and infected positive cases. By finding the probability we found the travelers specifically Zaireen (pilgrims) contributed more in the disease transmission to the local persons than the travelers from other countries. In our study we found that SARS-CoV-2 is more common in males than females. The rate of recovery found greater than the rate of emergence of new cases. The pattern of daily new cases surfaced is unpredictable as it varies daily. We found p (probability) value is less than 5%, we can say that there are 0.920 correlations between susceptible travelers and reported case, forecasting that travelers are the major source of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in GilgitBaltistan. We also found that overall, in Gilgit-Baltistan the SARS-CoV-2 cases rising disproportionately as compare to the other parts of Pakistan as sometime it rises because most of the Pilgrims arrived through Taftan belong to Gilgit-Baltistan.