The World Health Organization has asked Pakistan to implement intermittent lockdowns to counter the surge of coronavirus cases, as the country loosened some of the restrictions imposed to contain the outbreak, AFP reported on Wednesday.
While countries around the world took unprecedented measures, stopping all movement of people and enforcing indefinite stay-at-home orders, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has argued that an impoverished country such as his cannot afford a nationwide lockdown. Instead, Pakistan’s four provinces ordered “a patchwork of closures”.
However, last week, Khan announced that most of these restrictions would also be lifted. The decision came even as Pakistan’s infection rate is soaring and the death from the contagion is on the rise. The country has recorded 1.13 lakh cases of the coronavirus, including 2,255 deaths as of Wednesday morning. But the real rates are believed to be much higher, considering the limited amount of testing.
“As of today, Pakistan does not meet any of the prerequisite conditions for opening the lockdown,” the WHO said in a letter to Punjab’s provincial Health Minister Yasmin Rashid. Some 25% of tests in Pakistan come back positive for Covid-19, it added, indicating high levels of infection in the general population.
The global body said that because much of the country has not adopted behavioural changes such as physical distancing and frequent hand-washing, “difficult decisions” such as intermittent lockdowns in targeted areas, will have to be taken. These lockdowns can be enforced in a cycle of two weeks on and two weeks off, it said.
Rashid confirmed that the health ministry received a letter from the WHO on June 7 highlighting the importance of following the standard operating procedure to curb the spread of Covid-19. “The Punjab government has already given out orders to take strict action against those violating SOPs,” he said.
The premature lifting of restrictions in developing countries such as India, Pakistan, Brazil, among others, has raised concerns about the spread of infection as this could undermine all efforts to halt the pandemic. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Sunday said the outbreak was worsening globally and warned against complacency. “More than six months into the pandemic, this is not the time for any country to take its foot off the pedal,” he had said in an online briefing.
Globally, the coronavirus has infected more than 72.37 lakh people and claimed over 4.11 lakh lives as of Wednesday, according to the Johns Hopkins University. As many as 33.70 lakh people have recovered.
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