ISLAMABAD: As the World Health Organisation (WHO) praised Pakistan’s response to Covid-19, Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Friday that the government ensured protection of economically downtrodden people by enforcing smart lockdowns instead of complete shutdown during the pandemic.

WHO Representative in Pakistan Dr Palitha Gunarathna Mahipala at a press conference appreciated the commitment of the government and the NCOC to fight Covid-19 and said they had done a great job in coordinating the response to the pandemic.

The prime minister told a top-level meeting convened to review the Covid-19 situation in the country that at a time when the people around the world were protesting against lockdowns, the people in the country fully supported the government’s smart lockdown measures and followed SOPs.

Presiding over the meeting, Mr Khan said the government earned the world praise for its measures in responding to the pandemic while people in the country extended full support to the government and cooperated in getting vaccinated.

The government’s steps and coordinated response ensured that industrial and other economic activities had minimum impact of the pandemic.

WHO hails Pakistan’s response to Covid-19

The prime minister was informed during the meeting that the fifth wave of Covid-19 that brought Omicron had started declining after touching the peak worldwide in January.

The meeting was informed that with 6.8 per cent decline in Covid positive cases after Feb 10, the admission of Omicron patients to hospitals’ intensive care units (ICUs) had also shown a decline of 71 per cent as compared to the fourth wave.

The trend of no increase in hospital admissions and ICU requirements was a positive trend.

The meeting was further informed that 42 people were losing lives per day on an average across the country due to the Omicron variant.

About the progress on the vaccination side, the meeting was informed that with 90 million of the 150 million population of over 12 years of age now fully vaccinated, the number of vaccinated people would go up to 110 million (72 per cent) by next month.

The meeting was informed that Punjab was on top in terms of the pace of vaccination, followed by Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and other areas.

WHO representative

WHO Representative in Pakistan Dr Palitha Gunarathna Mahipala told a news conference in Islamabad on Friday that Pakistan had vaccinated 40 per cent of its population against Covid-19.

Dr Mahipala said that 89.85 million people in Pakistan had been fully vaccinated while 194.4 million doses had been administered to the people in the country. The number of partially vaccinated people stood at 115.2 million, he said.

The WHO representative said that 3.3 million booster doses had been administered to the people in Pakistan, which was another achievement.

Referring to the global picture of the positivity of the cases, he said that in Pakistan the positivity was now less than 10 per cent and this rate was also coming down.

About the Covid-19 cases, he said Pakistan was reporting less than 50 cases every day. Though Islamabad’s response is outstanding, challenges remained there and these had to be tackled, he said.

He said that WHO had started a campaign jointly with the health ministry to go door-to-door to vaccinate the elderly people and then the people who were marginalised. “Pakistan is one of the countries focusing on marginalised population and the vaccination is high. Other areas also need to be included in the campaign,” he said.

The WHO official said the latest situation showed that cases had now started coming down and there were 8,500 cases 10 days ago, but now they had come down to 4,000 in a week.

Dr Palitha Mahipala said that all brands of vaccines were now available in Pakistan. Of all the vaccines, so far 266 million doses are available across the country. Of these, 174 million (64 per cent) were received bilaterally; Covax supplied three million doses daily (32 per cent) and nine million doses were donated (four per cent).

About the availability of vaccines, he said a buffer stock of 10 per cent vaccine availability was required globally, and in case of Pakistan, nine per cent vaccine was available in the buffer stock, which meant that a good system was being maintained in the country.

He said the detection of variants was quite important, and Pakistan was one of the countries in the region which was quite good in that respect.

The WHO official said that Pakistan was one of the best countries in genome sequencing, and WHO had supported the country with supplies, training, capacity building and establishing new laboratory for genome sequencing at Dow University in Karachi.

He praised the government for ensuring availability of vaccines even in the country’s remotest areas.

Published in Dawn, February 12th, 2022