Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar said on Thursday that closing down entire cities for weeks was not the solution to curbing the spread of coronavirus.
Pakistan is currently experiencing a fourth wave of the coronavirus pandemic that has seen the number of infections as well as fatalities jump up steadily across the country, particularly in Karachi and Sindh, where the provincial government is reportedly considering to clamp lockdown.
Talking to the media alongside Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan after a meeting of the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) in Islamabad, Asad said that Pakistan was among the world’s first few countries to realise that closing down the entire country was not an effective way to battle the pandemic.
“We realised that the working class, the labourers have to pay the price for this,” he added.
He said that Pakistan’s tried-and-tested strategy — based on data and experience — needed to be followed. “Closing down entire cities for weeks is not the solution.”
Asad said that following of the SOPs and enforcing lockdowns in hotspot areas was the only way to tackle the spread of the deadly virus. “We have seen success with this [strategy] time and again.”
The minister said the Sindh government was “on the right path” with its handling of the situation in Karachi and monitoring the cases “actively”.
He regretted that people were still not taking the coronavirus seriously and have not realised that their actions have consequences.
“In Ramzan, we worked on SOP enforcement on a large scale and saw an improvement in the spread of the disease,” he said. “But just as it begins to recede, some people start thinking that it has completely gone away or forget that our own actions are directly related to the virus spread.”
Sharing the statistics, the minister said that currently Islamabad’s SOP compliance was 56.4 per cent, 46.6pc in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 42.7 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, 37.4pc in Gilgit-Baltistan and 38pc in Punjab. Sindh and Balochistan have the lowest SOP compliance at 33pc, he said.
VACCINATION: Asad also announced that the NCOC has decided to set an August 31 vaccination deadline for “high risk” sectors.
He said that students above 18 years of age, those working in the transport sector, public sector employees, law enforcement agencies, and staff working at hotels, restaurants, wedding halls, shopping malls and banks will have to get inoculated by August 31.
Meanwhile, teachers will have to get vaccinated by August 1 to continue working at educational institutions.
He said that those who have not been vaccinated will also not be allowed to undertake domestic air travel.
The minister said that the government has taken the steps to protect the livelihoods of the people associated with these sectors.
