By Uzma Zafar
ISLAMABAD: As the world acknowledged Pakistan’s handling of coronavirus pandemic, President Dr Arif Alvi on Monday asked the nation to keep up its ‘potential of greatness’.
“My dear Pakistanis, you cared for the poor, continued to pray to Allah and here you are where the world praises you,” he said in a tweet. The President said the world was now giving a deserving recognition of work done by Pakistani nation on COVID-19.“So you my friends, belong to a rising nation, let nobody distract you from your true potential of greatness,” he said.
President Alvi mentioned the statement by a U.S. former United States Treasury Secretary and top economist Larry Summers lauded Pakistan’s handling of coronavirus pandemic, saying that the U.S.would have saved trillions had it followed a similar plan.
“America’s failure on Covid-19 is almost unimaginable,” Summers said. “Heck, if the US had handled the pandemic as well as Pakistan, we would have saved in neighbourhood of $10 trillion.”
Summers was referring to the policy of “smart lockdown” adopted by Prime Minister Imran Khan’s government policy that helped contain the spread of the deadly virus.President Alvi also referred to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus who also praised Pakistan, saying country managed to fight the pandemic while allowing its economy to pick up as the country stabilized.
Meanwhile, in a video message, the president said the country had contained the virus to a great extent but it was not eliminated in to which necessitated constant observance of the anti-COVID standard operating procedures (SOPs). He said the country had recorded 6,825 as the highest Corona cases on June 14 which were dropped to 185 on August 31. Now again, the figure has crossed 700 mark, he added.
He said the government had faced the COVID-19 challenge through smart lockdown and simultaneously ensured the business activity to save people from unemployment. The president said that after a bit decline, the disease had resurfaced in America, France, Spain, England and other European countries.
He said Pakistan had tackled the coronavirus effectively after the people adhered to the precautions by wearing masks in mosques and markets besides frequently washing hands and observing social distancing.
He said in order to avert its resurgence, the people were required to keep observing the precautions for few more months to purge the country of the disease.
