- Only better handling will stop the spread
Now that 20 patients have been reported as suffering from the coronavirus, it cannot be said that Pakistan will, as was being propagated, stay above the fray. Luckily, there have been no deaths so far, but it would be counterintuitive to expect that there will be none. At the same time, the latest cases in Karachi, which seems to have been brought in by air from Iran, shows that the officious screening at airports is ineffective.
This can be because of a number of reasons. The first is that persons infected with the coronavirus may show none of the symptoms, which means that the screening for symptoms will not work. This is to assume, as may not be the case, that the screening tools work. The only really effective procedure is to quarantine all arrivals, releasing them only if they show no symptoms after the end of the incubation period, or if they test negative in a screening test. At the moment, travellers returning from abroad are not tested, it being pleaded that this is too expensive and there are not enough testing kits. That seems a pretty casual attitude towards people coming from places where the disease has penetrated the general population, like Iran or Italy. It is the federal government’s responsibility to arrange for the quarantine, and attempts to pass responsibility on to the provincial government are unseemly at this critical juncture.
Karachi seems to be developing as a centre within the country, and thus the holding of PSL matches there, where large numbers of people congregate and can be infected by a carrier, seems unwise, to say the least. True, the need to show that Pakistan is safe from terrorism may exist, but there is also a very strong need to show that Pakistan takes the coronavirus seriously. Also, with cases in Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan, it seems only a matter of time before Punjab, which is not just populous but also crowded, starts showing some victims. It is to be hoped that there has been any concealment out of a misguided desire to please anyone, because the reality of the epidemic has taken hold, and one of the tools of beating the coronavirus is proper reporting, not of what is convenient, but of what is true.