- A situation beyond thhe PM
Within a week, coronavirus cases have risen in Pakistan from 28 on March 13 to 377 on March 19, which should be sufficiently alarming. There is however a perception that the government reports show only the tip of an iceberg. It is maintained that the number of people actually infected with the virus is far higher than what official data would have us believe. The under-reporting is partly caused by two factors, the lowness of the number of tests carried and the stringency of the screening criteria to determine who is eligible for a test, which excludes those who show symptoms but have no travel history, thus keeping out the cases of secondary infection.
The first step to successfully deal with the pandemic is to stop the spread of the virus. There has to be early detection followed by isolation of the infected individuals. The Chinese did it through the lockdown of Wuhan, the centre of the epidemic, and 15 other cities in Hubei province. People in several cities were told to stay home and venture out only to get food or medical help.
Thanks the apathy or incompetence, or both, on the part of the PTI government, the virus is no more confined to a single province as was the case with China when it decided to lock down several cities. The virus in our case has already spread all over the country. Unlike Hubei province with a population of 60 million, Pakistan has 197 million citizens. What is more, Pakistan possesses neither the resources nor the expertise China has. What is even more, the urban poor in their millions would have no money to store food and no spare rooms to isolate their sick during a lockdown.
The other option for the government is to continue the partial shutdowns in the urban centres to check the spread of the disease, meanwhile widening the screening criteria to include cases of secondary infection also and setting up massive quarantine centres with testing facilities at several locations in the country. What one has seen happening at Taftan, and the same being replicated in Dera Ghazi Khan, does not provide one confidence in the government’s ability to undertake the task.
