KARACHI: Prime Minister Imran Khan has said his government is among the pioneers of the “smart lockdown” approach, which allows people to resume economic activities while observing standard operating procedures (SOPs) aimed at curbing the spread of Covid-19.

In a series of tweets on Saturday, the premier said: “The only solution as world has discovered is smart lockdown which allows for economic activity with SOPs. We are amongst pioneers of this approach.”

Sharing a video clip of a news segment featuring people’s scepticism around Covid-19, Mr Khan said “on the one hand we have the masses who are not taking the Covid-19 pandemic seriously & on the other hand, understandably, we have our frontline doctors & health professionals, who are at great risk”.

Referring to calls for a lockdown, he said the “elite” pushing for strict precautionary measures had the privilege of spacious houses and incomes unaffected by the fallout of lockdowns.

“A lockdown means collapse of the economy & in poorer countries a steep rise in poverty, crushing the poor as happened in (Narendra) Modi’s lockdown in India,” he added.

Over 875 places across the country have been sealed due to coronavirus cases, says minister

The prime minister appealed to the civil society, media, ulema and his government’s tiger force to create awareness among the public about Covid-19’s severity and the need to strictly observe SOPs.

Meanwhile, Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar said that slowing the pace of coronavirus infections was still the federal government’s top priority and it was acting upon its ‘smart lockdown’ strategy, added APP.

“The basic strategy has not been changed, which is to limit the pace of spread of the disease to the extent that our health system is not choked,” he said while talking to media personnel after chairing a meeting of the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC).

The minister said that administrative actions were being taken against those who were violating the SOPs. He urged the nation to show a sense of responsibility and discipline, as it had shown in the early days of the pandemic.

“In the early days of the virus, people showed great discipline and followed the guidelines to curb the spread of the disease; however I was much disappointed to see clear violations of the SOPs issued by the government during the last days of Ramazan and Eid,” he said.

Mr Umar said the people who were not following the SOPs were not only endangering their own lives but also those of others. He specifically urged the leaders of trade and industry to play a role in getting implemented the SOPs they had agreed upon.

At present, he said, there were 884 places across the country that had been sealed due to coronavirus cases and almost 200,000 people had been affected by such lockdowns. Troubling 200,000 persons for the sake of saving 210 million people was a reasonable step.

‘Disease not as deadly’

While urging the people to take the virus seriously, Mr Umar declared that Covid-19 was not as fatal in Pakistan as it was in Western countries. In Pakistan, he said, only nine out of one million population died of Covid-19 whereas in the United Kingdom 600 patients out of 1m were killed.

However, the life of every person is important and all the over 1,900 people who have died so far were definitely very dear to their family members and nothing can replace them.

Describing the progress made in the last 100 days, Mr Umar said that on February 26 only eight laboratories were working on the problem and only 472 virus-related tests were conducted on that day.

Today, he said, over 100 labs were working across the country and around 22,000 tests were conducted. The country now had a daily testing capacity of 35,000.

He said the number of ventilators had also increased and the National Disaster Management Authority had kept some ventilators in reserve which were being provided to the hospitals on demand.

The number of masks and protection kits had also increased and today the country was not only meeting the local demand but was also exporting them to other countries, he said.

He said a direct helpline was also being established to receive complaints about coronavirus-related issues. A mobile application was being launched to provide people information about availability of healthcare facilities in different hospitals across the country.

The minister asked doctors and other healthcare staff to download this app so that they could provide information to common people.

He said the NCOC team was working day and night since March 27 without any break and their dedication and spirit was commendable.

On the occasion, Chief Executive Officer of the National Information Technology Board Shabahat Shah said that the Pak Negehban Emergency Response mobile application would be functional from Saturday for hospitals while it would be functional for the common people in a couple of days.

Ventilators provided

As many as 250 additional ventilators have been provided to hospitals across the country in the last one week, according to the NCOC. So far, 72 ventilators have been provided to hospitals in Faisalabad, Multan, Rawalpindi and Lahore while 52 of them were given to health facilities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Peshawar and Abbottabad areas.

A total of 52 new ventilators have been provided to Sindh for Karachi and Sukkur, the NCOC press release said. Ten ventilators have been provided to hospitals in Islamabad.

According to the NCOC, 747 hospitals in the country had been designated for Covid-19, where 22,589 beds were allotted for patients in national hospitals while 5,060 patients were undergoing treatment in other hospitals.

Published in Dawn, June 7th, 2020