- Waiting for the worst
Worried over the rise of the coronavirus cases as a result of the hasty lifting of the restrictions by the PTI government, the World Health Organisation (WHO) ranked Pakistan among the top 10 countries in the world reporting the highest number of new cases of covid-19. It advised the government to enhance its daily testing capacity to 50,000 to assess the actual prevalence of the coronavirus across the country. The government last week enhanced the tests to 30,000, only to bring them down subsequently for unknown reasons. The WHO strongly recommended intermittent lockdowns with a two-weeks-off and two-weeks-on strategy to bring down the infection curve. This was all the more needed as during the last three weeks as coronavirus cases have increased by more than 100,000.
Instead of going by the advice of the WHO the PTI government announced the imposition of smart lockdowns in major cities of the country. The idea was to lock down only the pandemic hotspots while letting the other parts of these cities continue to function. The virus cannot be eradicated by enforcement of lockdowns in some areas of the cities as people will find ways to cross the areas and reach the places of work and may violate restrictions for other reasons. If the whole city is locked, people will have no reason to move out of the area under lockdown. What is more, smart lockdowns promote corruption. People can slip out of the enclosed area and traders can open businesses by greasing the palm of those on the spot enforcing the lockdown.
The government circles have claimed that lockdowns have reduced the number of infections. There is a need to find if the reduction is meaningful or nominal. If meaningful, it should have resulted in the reduction of the burden on hospitals which has apparently not happened. There are reports of Lahore public hospitals running out of space for new patients. The PM meanwhile says that June and July are to be difficult months for Pakistan and WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom maintains that the pandemic is still accelerating.
