COVID-19 not over yet

COVID-19 is not over in Pakistan! It is not merely a statement. It’s a ground reality.

In the early months of COVID-19, doom and anxiety was there. People were scared but vigilant too.in June, particularly after celebration of Eid, our country hit its peak for COVID-19 cases. People went out for Eid shopping, forgetting all the SOPs. As if this was not enough, they went to meet each other on Eid and also held gatherings in the vicinity of their homes. All of this resulted into a disaster. These days turned out to be peak days for Pakistan. Those were the days of the infamous “twin peaks”, the two days on the 13th and the 19th, when the country saw the highest number of new infections from Covid-19 since the outbreak began, 6,825 and 6,604 respectively. Hospitals were totally filled up with no more capacity, reports circulated of shortages of oxygen and critical medicines and, on WhatsApp groups, people anxiously shared stories of friends and relatives who had tested positive — in some cases entire families — and of people moving from one hospital to another searching for space.

Cut short to August, thank God these days are over and COVID-19 cases are continuously declining in our country. A question arises….is this the right time to open everything including educational institutions, restaurants, tourism, cinemas, gyms, marriage halls and malls? It involves mixed feeling. Life has begun to get back to normal but it is too soon. The government has announced SOPs for every place to practiced…wearing of masks is mandatory, social distancing should be carried out, body temperature will be checked out and sanitization will be carried out. While the SOPs look great on paper, we are yet to find out how practical and effective they are in reality.

All these businesses are opening not because COVID-19 is over, they are opening because our fragile economy needs it.

It is too early to declare victory against the virus because we do not yet understand what exactly has happened here, considering so many other countries have seen similar, if not better results. Secondly, so long as even a small number of cases of local transmission remain, the danger awaits and can burst into the open again. Dr Faisal Sultan, the government’s key point person on Covid-19, has cautioned against seeing the declining numbers as a victory. Until there is no single case of the virus, and until we have firmly eliminated all cases of local transmission, it would be a mistake to declare it a victory. Even in September, daily 400 to 450 cases of the infection are reported and as of yesterday, 10 deaths were also reported. So we need to keep in our minds that this war is not yet over. With educational institutions and cinemas opening in few days, we need to be more vigilant and SOPs should be followed more strictly to avoid circumstances that we faced previously.

 

by: Abeer Arshad 

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