On Saturday Pakistan recorded a grim milestone in the Covid-19 pandemic. The country reported the highest daily death toll since the start of the pandemic with as s many as 157 deaths in 24 hours pushing up the number of total fatalities so far to 16,999.
A day earlier, the Army had to be called in because the civil administrations failed to enforce the coronavirus precautions. While the measure had become inevitable, this exposed the lack of capacity mainly on the part of two provincial governments, Punjab and KP, both run by the PTI, one with 98 fatalities and the other 37. Sindh and Balochistan trudged far behind reporting 11 and 3 deaths respectively.
Those running the NCOC have belatedly realized that the country is also heading towards acute oxygen shortage. The realization of what can happen has apparently come after the harrowing reports appearing in the international media about people in India dying in and out of hospitals due to shortages in oxygen supplies. Instead of behaving like a rabbit in the headlights, there is a dire need to put in place an action plan to deal with the eventuality before it is too late
Like Modi in India, the PTI leadership also prided itself over fewer casualties in Pakistan than expected during the first wave of the pandemic. It was interpreted among other things as Allah’s special gift for the country. Violating the requirements of medical science, the BJP government allowed devotees to participate in the Kumbh festival which helped spread the virus. Prime Minister Imran Khan takes pride in Pakistan being the only Muslim-majority country which had kept mosques open last year during Ramazan.
The only way toward off covid-19 is to vaccinate the population, at least all those above 18, at the earliest. Despite claims of spending billions of rupees on pandemic control, the government failed to place orders for timely purchase of the vaccines, leaving the population at the mercy of the donors instead. The result: in a country with a population of 210 million only 1.5 million people, who comprise under 1 percent of the population, have so far been vaccinated. Unless the government picks up speed, the vast majority of the population will remain vulnerable to the pandemic.
