Pakistan In Top10 Reporting most Covid-19 cases: WHO – Daily Notable
Paris
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said Pakistan has been ranked among the top 10 countries in the world reporting the highest number of new cases of Covid-19 and advised the government to enhance daily testing capacity to 50,000 to assess the actual prevalence of coronavirus across the country.
While expressing concern over the hasty lifting of restrictions, the WHO in a letter to the four provinces stated Pakistan did not meet any of the prerequisites for the opening of the lockdown.
It also alerted Pakistan to its high positivity rate, underlining the seriousness of the Covid-19 situation and poor efforts of the government in this regard.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recommended to the Punjab government to implement a 2-week strict lockdown, immediately, to stem the exponential spike in novel coronavirus cases in the province.
In a letter to the Punjab health minister, the UN health agency said that the virus had spread all over the country, and a large number of cases had been recorded in big cities.
The cases had increased sharply after the easing of lockdown. It ranks Pakistan was among top-10 most affected countries.
The letter appreciated Pakistan’s efforts in fighting Covid-19 but warned that recent statistics suggest its current strategy was not paying off.
It recommended the government adopt a 2-week-on, 2-week-off lockdown, as it offerred the most chance of continuing economic activities while ensuring public health.
“After partial relaxation of the lockdown measures on May 1, 2020, then followed by complete relaxation on May 22, 2020, the rate of spread of COVID-19 increased,” it said, noting that new infections had climbed from around 1,000 per day during the lockdown to over 4,000 per day right now.
The WHO had earlier recommended that any government seeking to ease movement restrictions needed to fulfill the six conditions: no unchecked disease transmission; a health system that can detect, test, isolate and treat every case and trace every contact; minimized hot-spot risks in vulnerable places, such as nursing homes; implementation of preventative measures in schools, workplaces and other essential places; a “managed” approach to the risk of importing new cases and public awareness among communities to live under a “new normal” of coronavirus.
In its letter, WHO noted that Pakistan was not meeting “any of the prerequisite conditions for opening the lockdown.
” It said that Pakistan continued to exhibit a high positivity rate of 24% — above the required level of 5% — while the surveillance system to trace contacts was “weak.”
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