By Ajmal Khan Yousafzai
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan recorded 4,825 new cases of the coronavirus, taking its total to 800,452, data from the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) showed on Monday. In the last 24 hours, the country registered 70 deaths, taking the nationwide death toll to 17,187, according to the NCOC. A total of 694,046 people have recovered from the disease. With 290,788 confirmed cases, Punjab remained the worst-hit followed by Sindh where 278,545 people have tested positive, suggested the data.
Meanwhile, the country’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign is in full swing, with authorities urging eligible citizens to get themselves vaccinated against the disease. The daily meeting of the NCOC decided to allow walk-in vaccinations for all people over 50, but said they will need to pre-register prior to receiving their inoculations. “Decision [has been] taken to allow walk-in vaccination of all registered citizens of 50 plus age group,” Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar said in a tweet. “In today’s NCOC meeting decided to open up registration of 40 plus age citizens starting tomorrow,” he said. “If you are 40 years or older please register and encourage others to register.”
So far, more than 1 million people have been vaccinated against the disease, and the total number of people who have registered themselves for vaccination is now over 2 million, data from the Ministry of National Health Services (MoNHS) suggest. Private hospitals in major cities have also started inoculation with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine imported by a private pharmaceutical company.
The government is racing against time to add more beds and ventilators at hospitals, fearing meeting the same fate as India where overwhelmed hospitals, begging for oxygen supplies, have started to suspend new admissions. The provinces have also started summoning troops to ensure people don’t violate social distancing rules, according to Minister for Interior Sheikh Rashid Ahmad said. The government has said it will be forced to impose a nationwide lockdown if the COVID-19 situation does not improve this week.
A day earlier, three special aircraft of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) carrying a consignment of one million jabs of Covid-19 vaccine from China left for Pakistan. “Three PIA Boeing 777 aircraft have brought one million doses. The aircraft had left for China on Saturday,” Arab News quoted PIA spokesperson Abdullah Niazi as saying. Qadir Bux Sangi, PIA country manager in China, told the national flag carrier will also airlift an additional consignment of two million doses on April 29 (Thursday). He said two special aircraft and a regular PIA flight was utilised to airlift the doses from China.
Last week, Prime Minister Imran Khan said the standard operating procedures (SOPs) against Covid-19, if followed in letter and spirit, would help contain the virus. If the situation continues to get worse, the government will have to impose lockdowns in cities, something the government does not want and cannot afford because in that case the poor laborers and the daily wagers will suffer the most, Khan said in a televised address recently. To strictly enforce Covid-19 related measures, the Ministry of Interior on Sunday issued a notification allowing the provinces and administrative units to seek assistance from the army.
Other than restrictions already in place, the government has recently taken fresh measures by closing schools in cities with over 5 percent positivity rate, banning indoor and outdoor dining, and reducing market and office timings. An inter-provincial transport ban and inbound travel restrictions on 23 countries have also been extended. On Friday, Pakistan saw a record number of 157 deaths from Covid-19 since the outbreak of the pandemic in February of last year, forcing officials to deliberate on stricter measures to be implemented in the coming days if the situation further deteriorates. The proposed measures include complete closure of less essential services, educational institutes, and a ban on inter-city public transport.
Health experts believe that the variant of Covid-19 initially discovered in the United Kingdom has been behind the surge in the number of infections in the country.
The highly contagious variant, known as B.1.1.7, has become the most common strain of the virus in South Asian countries, including Pakistan. Scientists at Britain’s Covid-19 Genomics UK Consortium (COG-UK) first detected the variant in September last year in the English county of Kent.
It took almost three months before they discovered that the “Kent variant” was 70 percent more transmissible than existing variants, and further weeks before another shocking discovery: It was also much deadlier.
Health experts in the country warned that the continuous spike in the number of coronavirus cases could push the fatigued healthcare system to the brink of collapse.
