Can Pakistan Effectively Respond to Coronavirus Pandemic?
Pakistani public health system's ability to deal with Covid19 pandemic is increasingly being questioned with the number of confirmed coronavirus cases spiking in the country. The current hotspot is in southern Sindh province where the provincial government is taking the lead in fighting its spread by shutting schools, closing restaurants and shopping malls and banning large gatherings such as weddings and conferences. The federal government has closed Pakistan's western border with Iran where the coronavirus pandemic is raging. Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority has started screening all incoming passengers and stopped flights to and from several countries hit by the pandemic. Pakistani health experts are advising people with flu-like symptoms to self-isolate in their homes. The best known treatment for the severely ill is Resochin, the anti-malarial antiviral made by Bayer Pakistan. Hydroxycholroquine (HCQ), made by Getz Pakistan, is also reportedly effective in treating Covid19.
Is Pakistan Ready?
Pakistan is among only 6 countries in the world that have taken the steps they need to evaluate their ability to withstand a global pandemic, according to a 2017 report sponsored by the World Bank. The 6 countries named in the report are: Eritrea, Finland, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania and the United States.
Pakistan's ability to deal with a pandemic is now being tested by the coronavirus. The current hotspot for it is in southern Sindh province where the provincial government is taking the lead in fighting its spread by shutting schools, closing restaurants and shopping malls and banning large gatherings such as weddings and conferences. The federal government has closed Pakistan's western border with Iran where the coronavirus pandemic is raging. Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority has started screening all incoming passengers and stopped flights to and from several countries hit by the pandemic. Pakistani health experts are advising people with flu-like symptoms to self-isolate in their homes.
Pakistan is ramping up coronavirus testing and setting up isolation wards at many hospitals in Sindh and across the country. More testing accounts for the spike in confirmed cases. The best known treatment for the severely ill is Resochin, the anti-malarial antiviral made by Bayer Pakistan.
In response to a recent request by Pakistan's Express Tribune newspaper staff, World Health Organization Executive Director Dr. Michael J. Ryan said Pakistan has great capacity in public health but he also talked of challenges posed by the Coronavirus pandemic. “Pakistan has a highly mobile population with mega cities and undeserved people,” he said. “So there is a great challenge facing Pakistan. But Pakistan has also demonstrated time and again with dengue, polio and other diseases how all of the government and society’s approaches can be made to work.”
Dr. Palitha Gunarathna Mahipala, World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Pakistan, also lauded Pakistan's response to Covid19 pandemic, according to The News. He said, “Pakistan has timely come up with one of the world’s best National Response Program against COVID-19 and it is being implemented very effectively. Authorities are doing their job and now it is the responsibility of the people to follow the instructions and take preventive and precautionary measures to avoid contracting the viral disease.”
The World Bank report titled "From Panic and Neglect to Investing in Health Security: Financing Pandemic Preparedness at a National Level" was written by experts from the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the African and Asian development banks, and finance officials from various governments. The report included estimates of the economic damage various epidemics had done. For example, the viral pneumonia SARS — which ultimately killed only 774 people — shrank China’s gross domestic product by 0.5 percent in 2003. The report also broke down costs on a per capita basis. A major flu pandemic, for example, would cost Afghanistan only $12 per citizen, India $31, Pakistan $28 and the United States $248.
Social Distancing:
The current hotspot is in southern Sindh province where the provincial government is taking the lead in fighting its spread by shutting schools, closing restaurants and shopping malls and banning large gatherings. The federal government has closed Pakistan's western border with Iran where the coronavirus pandemic is raging. Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority has started screening all incoming passengers and stopped flights to and from several countries hit by the pandemic.
Italian experience with coronavirus has shown that even a well-developed public health system in a rich European country can be overwhelmed by rapidly growing pandemic such as Covid19. The best way to handle the situation is to cut the infection rate by keeping people about 6 feet apart. This is being called "social distancing".
Based on what the United States has learned from what is happening in Italy, major cities and states in America are taking steps to reduce large gatherings of people. Offices, schools, restaurants and shopping centers are closed with shelter-in-place orders in Silicon Valley and the larger 6-county San Francisco Bay Area.
Herd Immunity:
Herd immunity develops when a large percentage of population is infected or vaccinated. Dr. Arindam Basu, Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Environmental Health at University of Canterbury, has recently written an article in The Conversation arguing that it is "unethical and potentially dangerous" to wait for herd immunity to develop in the absence of a vaccine. It could result in hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths among the most vulnerable segments of the population such as the elderly and the immune-compromised.
Pakistan's Assistance to China:
Chinese President Xi Jinping has thanked Pakistan for its support during coronabirus outbreak in his country. "China is deeply grateful for Pakistan's support. Facts have proved once again that China and Pakistan are true friends who share weal and woe and good brothers who share each other's joys and sorrows. The special friendship is a historical choice, and is deeply rooted in the hearts of the two peoples," said Xi.
At the peak of the outbreak in February, Bayer Pakistan exported to China 300,000 tablets of Resochin (Chloroquine) that proved effective in treating coronavirus infections and saving lives in Wuhan. Resochin is an antiviral drug used for treating malaria. Chloroquine is manufactured by not just Bayer but several other drug companies as well. China and many other countries discontinued its production years ago. Several Pakistani pharmaceutical companies also manufacture HydroxyChloroquine which has lower toxicity and fewer side effects. The United Kingdom has banned hoarding and export of both of these drugs. In addition, Pakistan donated 7,000 surgical masks to China at the peak of the coronavirus outbreak. A recent paper titled "An Effective Treatment for Coronavirus (COVID-19)" by James M. Todaro, MD and and Gregory J. Rigano, Esq. has published data showing the efficacy of familiar anti-malaria drugs Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine for treatment of and as prophylactic against COVID-19.
Recently, Chinese research (reported in Clinical Trials Arena) reported that “data from the drug’s [chloroquine] studies showed ‘certain curative effect’ with ‘fairly good efficacy’ … patients treated with chloroquine demonstrated a better drop in fever, improvement of lung CT images, and required a shorter time to recover compared to parallel groups. The percentage of patients with negative viral nucleic acid tests was also higher with the anti-malarial drug… Chloroquine has so far shown no obvious serious adverse reactions in more than 100 participants in the trials… Chloroquine was selected after several screening rounds of thousands of existing drugs. Chloroquine is undergoing further trials in more than ten hospitals in Beijing, Guangdong province and Hunnan province.”
A small French study found only 25% of COVID19 patients who took it for 6 days still had the virus while 90% of those who had not taken it still had Covid-19.
Economic Impact of Coronavirus Pandemic:
Service sector accounts for 50% of the world GDP and 54% of Pakistan's GDP. Social distancing will significantly impact the services, particularly retail, restaurants, travel, transport and education sectors. Imran Khan has expressed fear that the pandemic will devastate the economies of developing countries.
“My worry is poverty and hunger," Khan said. "The world community has to think of some sort of a debt write-off for countries like us, which are very vulnerable, at least that will help us in coping with (the coronavirus).”
Summary:
Pakistan is among only six countries in the world that have taken the steps they need to evaluate their ability to withstand a global pandemic, according to a 2017 report sponsored by the World Bank. The current hotspot is in southern Sindh province where the provincial government is taking the lead in fighting its spread by shutting schools, closing restaurants and shopping malls and banning large gatherings. The federal government has closed Pakistan's western border with Iran where the coronavirus pandemic is raging. Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority has started screening all incoming passengers and stopped flights to and from several countries hit by the pandemic. The best known treatment for the severely ill is Resochin, the anti-malarial antiviral made by Bayer Pakistan. Dr. Michael Ryan and Dr. Palitha Gunarathna Mahipala of the World Health Organization (WHO) have talked of challenges Pakistan faces but also praised the steps it has taken to fight coronavirus pandemic.
Here's the latest Coronavirus Pandemic Update:
https://youtu.be/vE4_LsftNKM
Coronavirus Global Pandemic |
Is Pakistan Ready?
Pakistan is among only 6 countries in the world that have taken the steps they need to evaluate their ability to withstand a global pandemic, according to a 2017 report sponsored by the World Bank. The 6 countries named in the report are: Eritrea, Finland, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania and the United States.
Covid19 Coronavirus. Source: US CDC |
Pakistan is ramping up coronavirus testing and setting up isolation wards at many hospitals in Sindh and across the country. More testing accounts for the spike in confirmed cases. The best known treatment for the severely ill is Resochin, the anti-malarial antiviral made by Bayer Pakistan.
In response to a recent request by Pakistan's Express Tribune newspaper staff, World Health Organization Executive Director Dr. Michael J. Ryan said Pakistan has great capacity in public health but he also talked of challenges posed by the Coronavirus pandemic. “Pakistan has a highly mobile population with mega cities and undeserved people,” he said. “So there is a great challenge facing Pakistan. But Pakistan has also demonstrated time and again with dengue, polio and other diseases how all of the government and society’s approaches can be made to work.”
Dr. Palitha Gunarathna Mahipala, World Health Organization (WHO) representative in Pakistan, also lauded Pakistan's response to Covid19 pandemic, according to The News. He said, “Pakistan has timely come up with one of the world’s best National Response Program against COVID-19 and it is being implemented very effectively. Authorities are doing their job and now it is the responsibility of the people to follow the instructions and take preventive and precautionary measures to avoid contracting the viral disease.”
The World Bank report titled "From Panic and Neglect to Investing in Health Security: Financing Pandemic Preparedness at a National Level" was written by experts from the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the African and Asian development banks, and finance officials from various governments. The report included estimates of the economic damage various epidemics had done. For example, the viral pneumonia SARS — which ultimately killed only 774 people — shrank China’s gross domestic product by 0.5 percent in 2003. The report also broke down costs on a per capita basis. A major flu pandemic, for example, would cost Afghanistan only $12 per citizen, India $31, Pakistan $28 and the United States $248.
Social Distancing:
The current hotspot is in southern Sindh province where the provincial government is taking the lead in fighting its spread by shutting schools, closing restaurants and shopping malls and banning large gatherings. The federal government has closed Pakistan's western border with Iran where the coronavirus pandemic is raging. Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority has started screening all incoming passengers and stopped flights to and from several countries hit by the pandemic.
Italian experience with coronavirus has shown that even a well-developed public health system in a rich European country can be overwhelmed by rapidly growing pandemic such as Covid19. The best way to handle the situation is to cut the infection rate by keeping people about 6 feet apart. This is being called "social distancing".
Social Distancing to Limit Infection Rates |
Based on what the United States has learned from what is happening in Italy, major cities and states in America are taking steps to reduce large gatherings of people. Offices, schools, restaurants and shopping centers are closed with shelter-in-place orders in Silicon Valley and the larger 6-county San Francisco Bay Area.
Herd Immunity:
Herd immunity develops when a large percentage of population is infected or vaccinated. Dr. Arindam Basu, Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Environmental Health at University of Canterbury, has recently written an article in The Conversation arguing that it is "unethical and potentially dangerous" to wait for herd immunity to develop in the absence of a vaccine. It could result in hundreds of thousands or even millions of deaths among the most vulnerable segments of the population such as the elderly and the immune-compromised.
Pakistan's Assistance to China:
Chinese President Xi Jinping has thanked Pakistan for its support during coronabirus outbreak in his country. "China is deeply grateful for Pakistan's support. Facts have proved once again that China and Pakistan are true friends who share weal and woe and good brothers who share each other's joys and sorrows. The special friendship is a historical choice, and is deeply rooted in the hearts of the two peoples," said Xi.
Resochin (Chloroquine) Produced by Bayer Pakistan |
At the peak of the outbreak in February, Bayer Pakistan exported to China 300,000 tablets of Resochin (Chloroquine) that proved effective in treating coronavirus infections and saving lives in Wuhan. Resochin is an antiviral drug used for treating malaria. Chloroquine is manufactured by not just Bayer but several other drug companies as well. China and many other countries discontinued its production years ago. Several Pakistani pharmaceutical companies also manufacture HydroxyChloroquine which has lower toxicity and fewer side effects. The United Kingdom has banned hoarding and export of both of these drugs. In addition, Pakistan donated 7,000 surgical masks to China at the peak of the coronavirus outbreak. A recent paper titled "An Effective Treatment for Coronavirus (COVID-19)" by James M. Todaro, MD and and Gregory J. Rigano, Esq. has published data showing the efficacy of familiar anti-malaria drugs Chloroquine and Hydroxychloroquine for treatment of and as prophylactic against COVID-19.
In Vitro Efficacy of Chloroquine(CQ) vs Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) Against COVID19. Source: Nature |
Recently, Chinese research (reported in Clinical Trials Arena) reported that “data from the drug’s [chloroquine] studies showed ‘certain curative effect’ with ‘fairly good efficacy’ … patients treated with chloroquine demonstrated a better drop in fever, improvement of lung CT images, and required a shorter time to recover compared to parallel groups. The percentage of patients with negative viral nucleic acid tests was also higher with the anti-malarial drug… Chloroquine has so far shown no obvious serious adverse reactions in more than 100 participants in the trials… Chloroquine was selected after several screening rounds of thousands of existing drugs. Chloroquine is undergoing further trials in more than ten hospitals in Beijing, Guangdong province and Hunnan province.”
A small French study found only 25% of COVID19 patients who took it for 6 days still had the virus while 90% of those who had not taken it still had Covid-19.
HCQ (Hydroxychloroquine) Manufactured by Getz Pakistan |
Economic Impact of Coronavirus Pandemic:
Service sector accounts for 50% of the world GDP and 54% of Pakistan's GDP. Social distancing will significantly impact the services, particularly retail, restaurants, travel, transport and education sectors. Imran Khan has expressed fear that the pandemic will devastate the economies of developing countries.
“My worry is poverty and hunger," Khan said. "The world community has to think of some sort of a debt write-off for countries like us, which are very vulnerable, at least that will help us in coping with (the coronavirus).”
Summary:
Pakistan is among only six countries in the world that have taken the steps they need to evaluate their ability to withstand a global pandemic, according to a 2017 report sponsored by the World Bank. The current hotspot is in southern Sindh province where the provincial government is taking the lead in fighting its spread by shutting schools, closing restaurants and shopping malls and banning large gatherings. The federal government has closed Pakistan's western border with Iran where the coronavirus pandemic is raging. Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority has started screening all incoming passengers and stopped flights to and from several countries hit by the pandemic. The best known treatment for the severely ill is Resochin, the anti-malarial antiviral made by Bayer Pakistan. Dr. Michael Ryan and Dr. Palitha Gunarathna Mahipala of the World Health Organization (WHO) have talked of challenges Pakistan faces but also praised the steps it has taken to fight coronavirus pandemic.
Here's the latest Coronavirus Pandemic Update:
https://youtu.be/vE4_LsftNKM
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
South Asia Investor Review
Pakistan Covid Watch
How Grim is Pakistan's Social Sector Progress?
Pakistan Fares Marginally Better Than India On Disease Burdens
Can Imran Khan Lead Pakistan to the Next Level?
Democracy vs Dictatorship in Pakistan
Pakistan Child Health Indicators
Pakistan's Balance of Payments Crisis
Panama Leaks in Pakistan
Conspiracy Theories About Pakistan Elections"
PTI Triumphs Over Corrupt Dynastic Political Parties
Strikingly Similar Narratives of Donald Trump and Nawaz Sharif
Nawaz Sharif's Report Card
Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel
South Asia Investor Review
Pakistan Covid Watch
How Grim is Pakistan's Social Sector Progress?
Pakistan Fares Marginally Better Than India On Disease Burdens
Can Imran Khan Lead Pakistan to the Next Level?
Democracy vs Dictatorship in Pakistan
Pakistan Child Health Indicators
Pakistan's Balance of Payments Crisis
Panama Leaks in Pakistan
Conspiracy Theories About Pakistan Elections"
PTI Triumphs Over Corrupt Dynastic Political Parties
Strikingly Similar Narratives of Donald Trump and Nawaz Sharif
Nawaz Sharif's Report Card
Riaz Haq's Youtube Channel
Comments
https://st2.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/4193378256?profile=original
#Pakistan locks down province, bans international flights as #coronavirus spreads. PM #ImranKhan is urging people to stay at home but remain calm, saying that “panicking is more dangerous for us than coronavirus.” #COVID19 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pakistan-locks-down-province-bans-flights-as-coronavirus-spreads/2020/03/22/9757707a-6be2-11ea-abef-020f086a3fab_story.html
With the number of coronavirus cases in Pakistan soaring to more than 700 in the past few days, officials there have banned all international flights and have requested that security forces help institute a full lockdown in Sindh province, where a majority of cases have been reported. A third death from the virus was reported Friday.
Most of those found to be infected are Shiite pilgrims from Sindh who returned from visiting shrines in neighboring Iran, where the virus has already killed more than 1,500. Most reentered Pakistan via a single border crossing in Baluchistan province. A similar problem is affecting next-door Afghanistan, where tens of thousands of refugees have recently flooded back from Iran.
Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, facing public panic, has stopped short of declaring a nationwide lockdown but has asked all citizens to self-quarantine for two weeks. This past week, Khan came under strong criticism after playing down the threat in a nationwide address. He said that people should not “run to hospitals” to get tested and that 90 percent of those testing positive would “recover easily.”
On Friday, with several hundred new cases reported, Khan told a group of TV anchors that he hoped the coming of hot and dry weather would mitigate the outbreak. He urged people to stay at home but remain calm, saying that “panicking is more dangerous for us than coronavirus.” He said he was still reluctant to impose a nationwide lockdown because it would harm the working poor.
“We don’t want to try and save people from corona but they end up dying due to hunger and poverty,” Khan said. Pakistan, a Muslim-majority country of 210 million, has a high poverty rate, with about one-quarter of the populace earning less than $2 per day.
But in Sindh, a vast and impoverished region of close to 50 million, officials decided to impose a total lockdown beginning Sunday night. Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah was in discussions with army and police officials Sunday night and was expected to formally enlist their help to ensure public compliance with the lockdown.-----------------------------------------
As of this weekend, health officials said a 3,000-room quarantine center has been set up in Multan, a city in Punjab, for infected pilgrims who returned from Iran. They said it has 171 isolation rooms. After screening there, patients will be sent to a new general hospital for treatment, they said.
https://time.com/5803225/yuval-noah-harari-coronavirus-humanity-leadership/
Epidemics killed millions of people long before the current age of globalization. In the 14th century there were no airplanes and cruise ships, and yet the Black Death spread from East Asia to Western Europe in little more than a decade. It killed between 75 million and 200 million people – more than a quarter of the population of Eurasia. In England, four out of ten people died. The city of Florence lost 50,000 of its 100,000 inhabitants.
In March 1520, a single smallpox carrier – Francisco de Eguía – landed in Mexico. At the time, Central America had no trains, buses or even donkeys. Yet by December a smallpox epidemic devastated the whole of Central America, killing according to some estimates up to a third of its population.
In 1918 a particularly virulent strain of flu managed to spread within a few months to the remotest corners of the world. It infected half a billion people – more than a quarter of the human species. It is estimated that the flu killed 5% of the population of India. On the island of Tahiti 14% died. On Samoa 20%. Altogether the pandemic killed tens of millions of people – and perhaps as high as 100 million – in less than a year. More than the First World War killed in four years of brutal fighting.
In the century that passed since 1918, humankind became ever more vulnerable to epidemics, due to a combination of growing populations and better transport. A modern metropolis such as Tokyo or Mexico City offers pathogens far richer hunting grounds than medieval Florence, and the global transport network is today far faster than in 1918. A virus can make its way from Paris to Tokyo and Mexico City in less than 24 hours. We should therefore have expected to live in an infectious hell, with one deadly plague after another.
However, both the incidence and impact of epidemics have actually gone down dramatically. Despite horrendous outbreaks such as AIDS and Ebola, in the twenty-first century epidemics kill a far smaller proportion of humans than in any previous time since the Stone Age. This is because the best defense humans have against pathogens is not isolation – it is information. Humanity has been winning the war against epidemics because in the arms race between pathogens and doctors, pathogens rely on blind mutations while doctors rely on the scientific analysis of information.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/23/820043866/mass-religious-gathering-in-pakistan-leads-to-fresh-concerns-over-covid-19-sprea
The first two cases of coronavirus infection in the Gaza Strip, a war-shattered territory with a fragile health system, were confirmed over the weekend in Palestinian men who attended a mass religious gathering 10 days ago in Pakistan, according to an Islamabad-based Palestinian diplomat.
The diplomat, Ahmed Rabi, says the men were part of a two-day gathering that ended March 12 in eastern Pakistan. The gathering of the Tablighi Jamaat, a global conservative Muslim missionary group, brought together tens of thousands of Muslim preachers from some 80 countries and has raised concerns about the virus' spread in Pakistan and beyond.
The group, founded nearly a century ago in India, has millions of followers and proselytizes around the world. Preachers on missions sleep in mosques and make door-to-door visits.
A longtime Pakistani Tablighi Jamaat member, Arif Rana, said the gathering was canceled on March 12 because of rain — attendees sleep in the open. But Azhar Mashwani, on the Punjab chief minister's staff, said on Twitter that it ended because of coronavirus fears. Most attendees were Pakistani, but at least a few thousand came from other countries, Rana told NPR.
In Pakistan, four people in the southern province of Sindh who attended the gathering were infected with the virus, the provincial government reported. Other Pakistani provinces do not provide a detailed breakdown of coronavirus cases, so the national number may be higher.
Five preachers from Kyrgyzstan stayed in a mosque in Islamabad after attending the Tablighi Jamaat gathering and have also tested positive, said a senior health official who did not want to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
On Twitter, Muhammad Hamza Shafqaat, the deputy commissioner of Islamabad, accused the Kyrgyz group of "criminal carelessness" because "they knew that one of them had symptoms and they kept on roaming around."
Concerns have also been raised in Southeast Asia about infection after a Tablighi Jamaat gathering outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in late February and early March. Malaysian media reported that more than half of the country's known coronavirus cases were traced to the gathering. Preachers who attended also spread the virus to Brunei and Thailand, the New York Times reported, saying the gathering created "the largest known viral vector in Southeast Asia."
Tablighi Jamaat leaders in Pakistan had dismissed earlier calls by the Punjab provincial government to cancel their event, saying they believed those calls were motivated by anti-religious bias.
"Every other year, something or other happens which makes people afraid of getting together," Rana said. "We just focus on action, on deeds, and Allah protects."
Now, he said, for the first time in the group's history, they were curtailing activities such as weekly meetings, "until thing[s get] better."
According to a report in The News, the group of volunteers from across Pakistan had earlier this month come together to develop affordable solutions to combat COVID-19 and manufacture medical equipment using 3D printing technology in the country.
The volunteers are doctors, biomedical professionals, engineers, academics, diaspora, resource mobilisers and other smaller groups, who aim to make use of 3D printing to manufacture ventilators, valves and required equipment for the frontline response to the cornonavirus.
The group has announced that the first 3D ventilator prototype will be ready for testing within two weeks. The 3D printing process builds a three-dimensional object from a computer-aided design model (CAF), usually by successively adding material layer by layer, and is also called additive manufacturing.
The group has announced that it is seeking support from the nation to scale up the initiative for a larger impact on the health industry that requires resources and facilitation at different levels of the government.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/633189-volunteers-come-together-to-develop-affordable-solutions-for-pandemic
The need to set up a top class centre for virology was felt by the scientific leadership of the International Center for Chemical Biological Sciences several years ago, reflecting their foresight. The International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences now houses some 17 buildings spread over about 70 acres of land with some 600 students enrolled for PhD. It has been internationally awarded many international prizes and awards and is now the Unesco Center of Excellence, providing training to many scientists from other countries, including Germany.
The centre has been built through a number of private-public partnerships starting with the Husein Ebrahim Jamal Foundation that has set up a number of research centers in the institution, including the now famous H E J Research Institute of Chemistry. The Panjwani Center for Molecular Medicine was later established by the Panjwani Foundation and has already established excellent standards. Other donors include the Searle company led by Rashid Abdullah saheb. I also donated funds to it for setting up the Jamil ur Rahman Center for Genomics Research established in my father’s name.
After returning from Cambridge University in 1973, I have spent all my life in its development. It is now led by Prof Iqbal Choudhary, a leading research scientist of Pakistan. The buildings of the Virology Center have been constructed and Special Biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) facilities are being established in it, needed for research where work is performed with viruses and other agents that may cause serious or potentially lethal diseases through inhalation and that may contaminate the environment. A non-lethal form of Covid-19 was imported by this Karachi Center earlier this year, and work started in earnest to find a cure for this lethal disease.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/630787-coronavirus-and-pakistan
The total number of ventilators available across the country for critically-ill coronavirus patients are 1,700. Amid the drastic shortage and advance booking of ventilators globally, Pakistan has managed to get around 800 ventilators with the help of China. But the government is contacting several companies to increase the number to 6,000, the chairman of NDMA said.
There are currently 12 million masks available in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi, and another 12 million have been booked. Around 100,000 masks were available in Peshawar and 50,000 in Balochistan. About 12,500 suits are available for health workers. Nearly 2,000 laser thermometers are available at different entry points while another 30,000 would be imported from China. There are some 15,000 N-95 masks available in stock, mainly for medical staff while 50,000 more would be available shortly. Meanwhile, the Chinese tech company, Alibaba, has also donated 50,000 masks to Pakistan.
Pakistan has also established 1200 single bed-with separate bathroom accommodation at 3 entry points at the western border, which can be increased to 1,000 if needed. The total quarantine beds available in the country are 23,557 and some 2,942 isolation beds. There are 215 hospitals with isolation centres and 15 testing facilities.
https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/pakistan/pakistan-draws-up-contingency-plan-to-fight-coronavirus-1.70540804
The Pakistan Railways on Tuesday announced that all passenger train services would be suspended till March 31 to curb the spread of coronavirus infections.
Taking effect from midnight, all passenger trains will remain suspended owing to the growing number of COVID-19 cases in the country, while cargo trains will continue to function according to their schedule.
Passengers who have already booked seats will be accommodated in trains of their choice when the services resume, according to a statement issued by the Pakistan Railways.
In case tickets are unavailable, they will receive a full refund.
The move to suspend the services came after Prime Minister Imran Khan’s approval.
Earlier in the day, Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid told the media that the suspension of all passenger train services was on the cards but the final decision would be made by the prime minister.
He added that he had recommended to the prime minister to give a relief package to the railways and continue paying salaries of its employees while the services remained suspended.
On Saturday, the minister had announced the suspension of 42 trains by April 1 to restrict the spread of COVID-19 in the country.
The minister said trains would be suspended in phases, adding that the notification of the suspension would remain in effect till the first half of the holy month of Ramazan.
The trains suspended in the first and second phases included Khushhal Express, Akber Express, Sindh Express, Ravi Express, Shah Latif Express and Rohri Express. Jinnah Express, Bolan Express, Moinjo Daro Express, Thal Express, Marvi Express, Samman Shakir Express, Faisalabad Express, Musa Pak Express and Chenab Express.
The Pakistan Railways operates 142 trains on its 1,885-km-long tracks to ferry some 700 million passengers every year, which means that some 200,000 people travel by trains every day. However, because of the coronavirus spread, the number had declined.
“Due to the current situation the number has declined to 165,000 passengers per day,” the minister said.
I went to Iran on February 6 on a pilgrimage along with three of my close friends and some other pilgrims. We visited the holy shrines in the cities of Qom, Mashhad and Tehran and returned to Pakistan on Feb 20.
By then, the coronavirus outbreak had hit Qom – and hit it hard. Back in Karachi, I didn’t have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 respiratory disease. No fever, no cough, no shortness of breath, absolutely nothing. Still, I visited a local hospital a day after my return for blood work on the recommendation of our family physician.
The CBC report came out normal – or perfect I should say. Since there was no abnormality, I rejoined the university and attended classes for the next couple of days. A doctor, in the meantime, told me that the novel coronavirus doesn’t show up in blood through simple CBC – and that I need to take a swab test for this purpose.
This is when I started feeling dizziness and weakness. On Feb 25, I had cold sensation in my hands and feet. I also started coughing and feeling nauseated. The symptoms raised a red flag. Interestingly, I didn’t feel shortness of breath until then.
The symptoms were tell-tale. And my dad advised me to consult a doctor immediately. However, the hospital where I have had my CBC didn’t have kits to test me for the novel coronavirus. So, my father took me to Aga Khan Hospital, one of the best hospitals in the city, where I was diagnosed with the COVID-19 disease. That’s how I became the first corona-positive case in Pakistan.
Immediately after my diagnosis, I was sent to the isolation ward where my treatment began. I was diagnosed at an initial stage which is why the mysterious pathogen had not infected my respiratory system.
Medics assuaged my fears. They said the COVID-19 mortality rate is less than 1% and that it causes complications only among the elderly or those with a compromised immune system. “Since the immune system of the young patients is strong, I’ve good chances to recover completely,” one of my doctors told me at the time.
My treatment in the isolation ward was excellent. The doctors and paramedical staff handled me in a highly professional way. I was, however, not allowed to see my family and relatives, which was understandable since the virus is highly contagious. Officials from the World Health Organization also enquired about my case.
I made a swift recovery. They tested me three times to make sure the virus is completely out of my system. And finally the hospital allowed me to go home. Now, I’m feeling very good. Or I shall say I’m feeling perfect.
The sad part of the entire episode was that my personal details were leaked to the media by God knows who, which created a lot of problems for me and my family. My photo was all over the social media and I became a pariah.
Soon after my diagnosis, my entire family was tested for the coronavirus and luckily all of them tested negative. The screening was then extended to my friends who accompanied me on the trip to Iran and also the people who I had interacted with after my return to Pakistan.
The official statement described its new production potential as “a landmark achievement and a proud moment for the entire nation.”
“Special cloth has been used in production of Face Masks, that makes it re-usable after wash,” the statement said, adding that in view of the current situation, wherein the country was fighting novel coronavirus, Pakistan’s defense related production capability “had been diverted toward mass production of Face Masks and Hand Sanitizers.”
“The laudable efforts by Pakistan Ordnance Factories will indeed complement the ongoing national drive to fight COVID-19,” it continued while promising “further breakthrough” in “the near future.”
Pakistan’s security forces have already been playing their role in preventing the spread of the dreaded virus in the country by activating the network of their hospitals across the country to deal with the problem.
https://www.arabnews.pk/node/1647331/pakistan
#American editor of Washington Post:”We each underwent a temperature scan at the #Islamabad airport. We also had to fill out a form asking if we’d been in China or Iran, two countries hit hard by covid-19..Nobody checked us on arrival at #JFK” #coronavirus https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/25/coronavirus-quarantine-new-york-pakistan-airport/
“Are you guys being quarantined?” asked one friend after another after my husband and I arrived back in Washington this past weekend from an eight-day trip to Pakistan.
In fact, while we’ve decided to self-quarantine for two weeks out of concern about the covid-19 pandemic, no government official ever told us to do so — it just seemed like the right thing to do. Nor did we receive any sort of screening at the airport when we returned to the United States, despite flying into New York — the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak, with over 25,000 reported cases and more than 200 deaths as I write this.
The disconnect between the illness’s mounting human toll and this seemingly lax approach to incoming international air passengers has opened our eyes to the federal government’s insufficient response to the coronavirus and caused us to ask why our country, with its vast resources, seemingly can’t — or won’t — take the coronavirus as seriously as it should.
When we arrived in Pakistan on March 13, we each underwent a temperature scan at the Islamabad airport. We also had to fill out a form asking if we’d been in China or Iran, two countries hit hard by covid-19, during the previous 14 days. We were asked to check boxes indicating if we had a fever, cough or shortness of breath. Though 2 a.m. was probably a low-traffic arrival time, it was a painless, organized process, not a major inconvenience.
So we were shocked when we arrived Saturday at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport to discover that no covid-19 screening measures or advisories about quarantining awaited us. We simply got off the plane and proceeded to the U.S. citizens’ line, as if returning from any normal overseas trip. We did our customs declaration (Are you bringing in any food?) at an electronic kiosk. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer who scanned our passports (and who was wearing gloves) asked us a couple of questions about where we’d been and what we’d done in Pakistan. My husband was kept back for a few minutes of additional questioning, which appeared to be motivated more by security concerns than health. No one said a word about quarantines.
https://www.facebook.com/ehtesham.a.nezami/videos/10218751232545222/
Egypt’s Al-Azhar has issued a fatwa on the request of President Dr Arif Alvi permitting suspension of Friday prayers to control the spread of deadly coronavirus across Pakistan.
“I am thankful to Grand Imam Shaikh of Al-Azhar and Supreme Council for responding to my personal request to provide guidance to us with regard to Farz Jamaat and Juma prayers in mosques during coronavirus attack,” the president said in a tweet on Wednesday.
President Alvi through Egypt’s ambassador in Pakistan had sought guidance from Al-Azhar institution, an authority on Islamic injunctions, for a word on the suspension of congregational prayers at mosques amid spike in coronavirus cases.
On Friday morning, trucks full of medical supplies were unloaded at the border as the teams from both sides braved the harsh weather and snow. Meanwhile, a plane carrying 50,000 coronavirus testing kits also arrived in Karachi on March 27. This was the second bulk consignment sent by China’s Alibaba and Jack Ma Foundation within days. On March 25, the foundation sent 500,000 surgical masks and 50,000 N95 respirators to Pakistan. Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, Consul General of China Li Bijian and other officials received the supplies at Karachi airport.
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On March 26, Yan Chen, managing director of Challenge Group of Companies from China called on Prime Minister Imran Khan to donate 15,000 protection suits for Pakistani doctors and paramedical staff on the frontline battling the pandemic. To meet the increasing demand for protective gear, China will help produce the protection suit in Pakistan’s city of Lahore, said the Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan, Yao Jing. Chinese government and leadership is committed to support Pakistan in combating Covid-19 as their top priority, the ambassador added.
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Pakistan will receive around 20 tonnes of medical goods and 20 ventilators on an urgent basis from China this week, said Chairman National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Lt. Gen. Mohammed Afzal, during March 27 media talk. Additionally, two more planes would bring 100 tonnes of urgently needed medical equipment from Beijing and Chengdu next week.
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Full gear for 30,000 ICU workers
There are currently 194,000 medical health practitioners in Pakistan, of which 30,000 work in ICUs. “These 30,000 medical practitioners working in ICUs will be equipped with complete medical kit by April,” he said. Each box will contain face-shields, goggles, two N95 and 30 surgical masks, hand wash kit.
The number of beds in the intensive care unit (ICUs) in Pakistan currently is 19,670. The capacity of quarantine facilities has also been enhanced from 500 beds to 162,000 now. Pakistan’s Covid-19 command and control centre has also booked 1,795 three-star and four-star hotels where 40,000 patients can be accommodated if required.
There are nearly 2200 ventilators available in public hospitals. The number of the imported ventilators will reach to 1,000 by April 10 to 15, the NDMA chief said. This number would rise to 2,000 to 3,000 by April 25 and the officials expect to enhance it to 8,000 and 10,000 by May.
Pakistan would have enough medical equipment, including personal protection kits, by April 5 to improve the safety of the health officials working on the frontline, said Health Minister Dr Zafar Mirza.
Top 3 priorities
Pakistan’s top three priorities under the Covid-19 strategy, according to NDMA chairman:
1. Medical gear for doctors & health workers
2. Ventilators & supplies for treatment of patients
3. Coronavirus testing kits
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-testing-source-data
https://www.nih.org.pk/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/COVID-19-Daily-Updated-SitRep-28-Mar-2020.pdf
https://icmr.nic.in/sites/default/files/whats_new/ICMR_website_update_27March_9AM_IST.pdf
Number of cases in Pakistan is probably higher than India because of large numbers of people traveling between Pakistan and Iran which is a coronavirus hotspot. Testing in Pakistan is mainly targeted at that group and their family members and contacts in Pakistan.
So far, vast majority of coronavirus infections are among people who came in from Iran. There are a lot fewer local transmissions in Pakistan.
Most people infected by the virus only experience mild symptoms, such as fever and cough, and recover within a few weeks. But the virus can cause severe respiratory illness and death, particularly in older patients or those with underlying health problems.
Pakistan has closed its borders with both Iran and Afghanistan, but has come under widespread criticism for its initial lax response to the virus.
Even as the pandemic spread to the country, Pakistani authorities allowed tens of thousands of Islamic clerics from around the world to congregate for three days outside the eastern city of Lahore. Some 200 of the clerics are now quarantined at the site of the gathering, a sprawling compound belonging to an Islamic missionaries group, Tableeghi Jamaat.
Many of the visiting clerics at the conference returned to their home countries, some of them carrying the coronavirus. The first two reported cases in the Gaza Strip attended the three-day gathering in Pakistan, and are now under quarantine in Gaza. Other linked cases have emerged elsewhere in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has refused to impose a countrywide lockdown saying it would devastate the country’s poor, but ordered non-essential businesses closed, including restaurants, money changers and wedding halls.
As of Saturday, the government still had not ordered mosques closed nationwide, instead relying on recommendations to worshippers not to gather for weekly Friday prayers. Pakistani officials are reluctant to defy local hard-line Islamic leaders, who can whip up mobs to protest any perceived insults to religion. Some of these clerics have taken to social media to urge the faithful to fill the mosques, saying it is their religious obligation.
Pakistan’s federal health authorities say the outbreak is so far concentrated in Punjab province, with 490 confirmed cases there, and Sindh province, which has 457 confirmed infections. Other cases are spread throughout several other regions, including the capital, Islamabad.
Health authorities in the country’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province reported one additional death Saturday, a woman in the district of Dir. Ajmal Wazir, a spokesman for the provincial government, said the woman fell sick after returning from a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia, before dying in a government hospital where she tested positive for the coronavirus.
In Iran, officials have repeatedly insisted they have the outbreak under control, despite concerns it could overwhelm the country’s health facilities.
Iran’s government has faced widespread criticism for not acting faster to contain the virus. Only in recent days have authorities ordered nonessential businesses to close and banned travel between cities — long after other nations in the region imposed sweeping lockdowns.
Pakistan has converted hundreds of hotels into temporary quarantine centers, one of several urgent steps to ensure its traditionally ill-prepared public health care system can deal with the coronavirus pandemic.
The rapid response, critics say, is unusual in the wake of limited resources facing the cash-strapped country.
Islamabad’s close ally, Beijing, has also stepped in to deliver critical medical staff and supplies to help in limiting the effects of the pandemic.
Pakistani officials said Friday that the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus had risen to at least 1,300, and at least 11 people had died, since the country detected its first case a month ago.
The number of infections are the highest in South Asia, though Pakistani officials insist the spread is “very slow” compared with rates in other countries.
Chinese aid, struggling health care system
On Friday, China and Pakistan briefly opened their only overland crossing, known as the Khunjerab Pass, 4,700 meters above sea level, to transfer urgent medical supplies from the Chinese side, such as test kits, ventilators, face masks and protective suits.
Chinese private organizations, such as the Alibaba and Jack Ma foundations, have donated hundreds of thousands of face masks, tens of thousands of test kits, and protective suits.
“We are ready to provide whatever assistance and support to Pakistan. In China we believe in that if you give me a drop of water, I will dig a spring for you,” Yao Jing, Beijing’s ambassador to Islamabad, said in a video message.
When the coronavirus first emerged last year in Wuhan, in China’s Hubei province, Pakistan was among the first nations to respond, delivering critical medical supplies to its neighbor and staunch ally.
Critics fear that Pakistan’s strained public health care system, with a history of failing to contain infectious disease and marred by neglect, lack of funds and nepotism, is already strained and not in a position to tackle a major outbreak.
Prime Minister Imran Khan said his government had launched a massive effort to establish new hospitals and boost capacity of existing health facilities to prepare for such a scenario.
The head of Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) said Thursday that the process of importing medical equipment had also been set in motion.
General Muhammad Afzal told reporters that, until a month ago, Pakistan had fewer than 500 “so-called” quarantine beds, but the number has since been increased to 162,000.
“This is because we have also booked roughly 1,795 three-star and four-star hotels, with a collective capacity of 42,000 single-bed rooms, to use them as quarantine centers. We have also locked six hotels with five-star facilities if needed,” Afzal said.
The number of intensive care units in hospitals around Pakistan has risen from 700 just a couple of weeks ago to about 20,000, Afzal said.
The general said two transport aircraft would be sent to China on Saturday to bring back roughly 100 tonnes of medical equipment.
The Chinese assistance, Afzal said, includes “walk-thorough testing technology” that will be deployed next week to conduct mass testing in Pakistani cities with higher infections.
"I fear our (current) efforts will do little to contain the virus, because we have a resource-constrained, fragmented, perennially underfunded public health system," Katz said. "Distributing such limited resources so widely, so shallowly and so haphazardly is a formula for failure."
The current plan of keeping everyone at home actually puts the most vulnerable — like those who are sick, or grandparents — in a much more precarious position. Because everyone, from all generations, are likely under one roof and interacting with each other, Katz said, the chances of the virus spreading among single families rises exponentially.
"As the virus is already circulating widely in the United States, with many cases going undetected, this is like sending innumerable lit matches into small patches of tinder," Katz said. "Right now, it is harder, not easier, to keep the especially vulnerable isolated from all others — including members of their own families — who may have been exposed to the virus."
This was an element that seemed to have caught Cuomo's attention, especially as some of his own immediate family — like daughter Cara — have returned home in the midst of the coronavirus crisis.
"Isolate people, but isolate the vulnerable people," Cuomo said, sharing his interpretation of Katz's proposal. "Don't isolate everyone, because most people are not vulnerable to (coronavirus). And if you isolate all people, you might be actually exposing the most vulnerable people by bringing in a person who is healthier, and stronger, and who may have been exposed to the virus."
Doing that — focusing on a "much smaller" portion of the population — could allow "most of society to return to life as usual, and perhaps prevent vast segments of the economy form collapsing," Katz said.
"Healthy children could return to school, and healthy adults go back to their jobs. Theaters and restaurants could reopen, though we might be wise to avoid very large social gatherings like stadium sporting events and concerts."
While Cuomo says he is looking for ways to bring society back to some normalcy, he doesn't regret his actions so far in trying to slow the spread of the coronavirus throughout the state.
"But I think there is a line," the governor said. "A spot where those to lines cross. You have to identify it, and that is what we're going to start to work through."
And the sooner that work can begin, the better.
"At some point you have to open the valve," Cuomo said, "because that is oxygen for the economy. Because this is not sustainable."
Until last week, Ahsan Pirzada ran a law firm in the Pakistani capital. But on March 22, when businesses shut down across Islamabad, thousands of low-wage Pakistanis lost their jobs, he decided to act.
He raised thousands of dollars through his friends and Facebook acquaintances to buy food. He converted his office into a storehouse and made ration packs with flour, rice, sugar, lentils, milk and cooking oil.
"This is enough for a family of four to five people to survive for 14 days," says Pirzada. He gestures to 35 food packs piled in a friend's pickup truck that he is going to deliver to a nearby slum.
Pakistanis pride themselves on their volunteer culture, and days into countrywide shutdowns to halt the spread of the new coronavirus, citizens have sprung into action.
Pakistan has registered 18 deaths from COVID-19 and has identified 1,650 cases of infection, according to government figures, but officials say the number of people with the coronavirus could be as high as 12,000.
One woman, Irum Mumtaz, set up a quarantine ward for a public hospital, run by volunteers. An entrepreneur, Umer Hussain, makes free protective suits for medics. Individuals like Pirzada distribute food. So do leftist groups like Corona Solidarity Campaign and the Robin Hood Army. A Pakistani nonprofit, The Citizens Foundation, does the same but on scale, using its network of 1,600 low-cost schools to aid 700 villages and slums.
But this pandemic poses unprecedented challenges: Pirzada only has a flimsy mask because there's a global shortage of protective gear. And in previous distributions, people crowded around him. "They're in desperate straits," he says. "They will come close and they will try to grab onto you. You can ask them to stay at a distance, but it doesn't work."
This time, Pirzada tries something new: He and other volunteers will put the rations in a church inside the slum. Then they'll call each designated family to pick up their share.
Pirzada parks near the church and volunteers start unloading the rations. People immediately crowd around, and keep entering the church, despite efforts to keep them out. One woman tugs at Pirzada's sleeve, demanding food. "Please wait five minutes, mother!" Pirzada says. "I've been waiting 10!" she snaps.
Another woman lingers outside, hoping for food, but she's not on Pirzada's distribution list of 35 families. Shabana — she only has one name — says her brothers are out-of-work taxi drivers and they need food.
Pirzada says he'll make another distribution soon. As for his personal safety: another volunteer group will donate him protective gear.
SAN FRANCISCO — State leaders and doctors are cautiously optimistic that the Bay Area's early moves to lock down residents two weeks ago have prevented surges of coronavirus patients from overwhelming the region's health care capacity thus far.Six Bay Area counties were first in the country to adopt aggressive tactics with an enforceable March 16 order requiring residents to stay at home. Gov. Gavin Newsom quickly followed with a statewide order three days later restricting the state's 40 million residents from all but essential activities.After 14 days — the outermost period at which symptoms are believed to emerge post-infection — doctors at area hospitals are now reporting fewer cases than they expected to see at this point, and officials credit the lockdown with stemming the tide of patients they feared would flood into emergency rooms.Northern California offered a rare glimpse of optimism Monday as the U.S. recorded its most coronavirus deaths in one day and Washington, D.C.-area jurisdictions — Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia — issued their first enforceable stay-at-home orders. Health officials across the nation are eyeing the Bay Area as a bellwether to determine the effects of social distancing, since the region's policies were replicated in various states and cities in subsequent days.The Bay Area's primary goal two weeks ago was to slow the growth of serious cases, buying public officials and hospitals enough time to increase the number of hospital beds, respirators and staff necessary to handle a coronavirus surge."We believe very strongly the stay-at-home order has helped advance our efforts in reducing the stress on the system that we believe would have already materialized in more acute ways had we not advanced those protocols when we did," Newsom said Monday in his daily press conference.While officials remain adamant that people stay home and adhere to social-distancing guidelines — the Bay Area Monday extended its stay-at-home order to May 1 — they also are praising residents for following orders and expressing optimism that the measures will continue to work.
Pakistan is rapidly increasing its capacity to strengthen the health sector to cope with coronavirus pandemic by setting up new labs, buying ventilators, testing kits and protective kits. The government has announced the new initiatives to contain the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 1,800 people in Pakistan so far.
The country has received 10 ventilators from China last week along with thousands of masks and testing kits. “China is sending another shipment which includes 16 ventilators and 5000 protection equipment set that will be delivered to doctors, nurses and paramedics fighting in the front line against the pandemic” Chairman of National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Lt. Gen. Mohammed Afzal announced.
Pakistan to receive 1,000 ventilators in coming weeks
Pakistan has ordered nearly around 3000 ventilators from around the world and expects to receive at least 1200 within the next 10 days, NDMA chief informed during the March 30 press briefing. Furthermore, Pakistan would receive around 150 more ventilators next week, which have been donated by different countries. There are currently 2200 ventilators available in public hospitals for the critically ill patients.
Testing kits capacity enhanced
Pakistan’s testing capacity has been enhanced from 30,000 to 280,000 and would be further enhanced to 900,000 by mid April, the officials said on Tuesday. A day earlier, nearly 20,000 testing kits were dispatched to Sindh province, 5000 to Punjab, 4800 to Balochistan while there are 37,000 kits available to be provided as required and necessary. The country has performed nearly 15,000 coronavirus tests since the outbreak, according to Health Minister Dr Zafar Mirza.
Protective gears and thermal gates
Pakistani officials are hopeful that nearly 100,000 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) — the key medical gear — would arrive by April 6. Meanwhile, another order of 100,000 PPE sets is expected to arrive by mid April. Pakistan has also procured nearly 100 walk-through thermal gates to be placed at airport gates. Pakistan would have enough medical equipment, including personal protection kits, by April 5 to improve the safety of the health workers, officials say.
Testing labs to be increased to 50
To improve the testing capacity, NDMA is working in close collaboration with NIH to increase the existing number of coronavirus testing labs from 14 to 50 in next 20 days, according to the NDMA chief. The new testing labs would be set up in Islamabad, Karachi, Rawalpindi, Muzaffarabad, Mirpur, Rawalakot, Abbotabad, Sargodha, D I Khan, Gujrat and Bahawalpur in Punjab, two more in Sindh and Balochistan each, to cover a wider population.
Training programme for laboratory specialists
Pakistan is also beginning a training program for the paramedics and laboratory staff to overcome the shortcomings. Initially, NDMA would recruit 100 lab technicians with expertise in molecular biology. “We will offer 6-month contract to these lab technicians and if the program is successful then it will help overcome laboratories gaps for testing patients,” NDMA chief added.
All health workers in ICU to be immediately equipped
At least 16,700 PPE suits are being delivered to hospitals across the country. The government officials have assured that all of the 30,000 medical health practitioners working in intensive care unit (ICUs) would be equipped with a complete medical kit by early April. They would each be provided a set of face-shields, goggles, two N95 and 30 surgical masks, hand wash kit. Meanwhile, the number of beds in the intensive care unit (ICUs) has been increased to 19,670. The capacity of quarantine facilities has also been enhanced to 162,000 now.
Pakistan on Wednesday announced a two-week extension in an ongoing lockdown in the wake of rising numbers of coronavirus cases in the country.
"The government has decided to continue the current restrictions on public movement until April 14," Federal Minister for Planning Asad Umar told a news conference in capital Islamabad after a meeting on dealing with the pandemic.
The lockdown, Umar observed, had significantly added to the government's efforts to stem the spread of the virus. " That's why, the government has decided to continue the restrictions, except for the goods transportation, for two more weeks."
Islamabad also announced partial resumption of international flights, mainly to bring nearly 2,000 Pakistanis stranded in different countries, from April 4. However, all the domestic flights will remain suspended until further order, according to the minister.
Initially, state-run Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) will be allowed to operate 17 flights from Islamabad airport to bring back the stranded Pakistanis from Turkey, U.K., Canada, Azerbaijan, and other countries from April 4 to April 11.
The decision, Umar said, to continue or suspend the international flights would be taken after reviewing the week-long operations.
The number of novel coronavirus cases in Pakistan has risen to 2,007 with more than 150 confirmed in the last 24 hours, officials said Wednesday.
The country’s death toll jumped to 27, while 12 patients are in critical condition.
Nearly 80% of the confirmed cases had recently returned from Iran and Saudi Arabia.
So far, 82 patients have recovered and were discharged from the hospital, the Health Ministry said.
After first appearing in Wuhan, China last December, the virus has spread to at least 180 countries and territories, according to U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University.
Its data shows the number of confirmed cases worldwide have surpassed 885,600, with the death toll over 44,200 and more than 185,400 recoveries.
The National University of Science and Technology (NUST) indigenously developed COVID-19 testing kits which have been sent to DRAP Technical Assessment Committee for comprehensive checking.
It said 13,000 surveillance centres had been set up across the country with public awareness messages disseminated through all modes of media.
https://arynews.tv/en/covid-19-pakistan-cases-lower-sc/
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The government submitted on Saturday to the Supreme Court of Pakistan a report on its national action plan for combating the coronavirus epidemic spreading across the country.
In its report, the government detailed the situation arising in the wake of the pandemic and the severity of suspected cases.
“By April 25, the number of the coronavirus cases are feared to reach 50,000,” the report stated at one point.
According to the breakdown provided in the report, around 7,000 cases of the total are expected to be critical in nature while around 2,500 could be a cause for concern. The government estimates that a further 41,000 cases could be of a mild nature.
The report notes that confirmed cases are expected to be lower than that of countries in Europe, and assures that the government is trying to maximize its testing capacity.
The federal government has said that it has put in place an emergency plan costing $366 million and guidelines have been prepared in consultation from the medical experts.
“All the airports have special counters to monitor coronavirus,” it mentions in the report, adding that around 222 suspected patients have been traced thanks to entry and exit point checking at airports.
The areas adjacent to Iran and along the Balochistan border have declared an emergency to cope with incoming infected individuals, it says.
“Preparations were made to place patients in 154 districts under quarantine,” said the government report.
As of Saturday, Pakistan has recorded more than 2,700 cases and 40 deaths.
https://www.geo.tv/latest/280938-govt-submits-report-on-national-action-plan-to-sc
The federal government of Pakistan has worked out the impact of losses of pandemic Covid-19 virus on some sectors of the national economy and shared the initial assessment that total losses stood at the whopping figure of Rs2.5tn (around $15.6bn).
Official estimates first time shared with a selected group of reporters in the aftermath of the outbreak of coronavirus reveal that under moderate restrictions, employment loss could be up to 12mn, around 20% of the employed labour force of the country.
The total labour force in the country stood at 60mn-65mn and moderate estimates calculated by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), an affiliate of Planning Commission, showed that the lingering pandemic could result into unemployment ranging from 12mn to 20mn.
The PIDE had assessed that the monthly average losses of losing jobs stood at Rs180bn to Rs260bn, so in the worst-case scenario basis, the estimated losses could go up to Rs780bn in the next three months.
However, the government has decided to provide Rs4,000 monthly stipend to expected job losers.
The Planning Commission, under deputy chairman Planning Commission Dr Mohammad Jehanzeb Khan, worked out the initial losses caused by Covid-19 pandemic on a few selected sectors of the economy in consultation with ministries/divisions and international donors in more than last two-week period.
These estimates have been worked out such as government-owned/department business losses, tax revenues collected by the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR), massive reduction in import and export (trade figures losses) and these estimates did not include losses on account of GDP growth rate.
The top official said it was widely believed that the impact of the virus and the severity of lockdowns on the overall economy may have a severe impact on economic performance parameters.
'We have coordinated our efforts to assess the quickly evolving situation. Initial estimates put a business loss amount over Rs450bn for the fourth quarter (April-June) period of the current fiscal year.
Please bear in mind we continue to assess the situation and information from other sectors is coming, said the official.
When asked about more details, the official sources said that these were assessed through incurring losses of PIA, Pakistan Railways and other public sector entities.
They said that the Security and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) shared information that the stock market tumbled and it so far caused losses to the tune of Rs200bn to Rs250bn.
The government's business loss might escalate further because it did not include the overall losses on account of GDP growth and important sectors like agriculture, manufacturing and services sectors amid halting economic activities in all sphere of lives.
On the government's tax revenue side, the official said that it was expected that the FBR could see a decrease in revenue/cash outflow of around Rs600bn alone in the fourth quarter (April-June) period of the current fiscal year.
Initially, the FBR had estimated revenue losses of Rs380bn but they revised upward their losses in the wake of additional Rs200bn losses on account of deferment of utility bills, including electricity and gas and then release of stuck-up refunds to the tune of Rs100bn.
The official sources said that these figures of revenue losses were shared by the FBR.
#Coronavirus: How #Pakistan is using #technology to transfer Rs. 150 billion ($900 million) cash to people in need. #COVID19 https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-how-pakistan-is-using-technology-to-disperse-cash-to-people-in-need-134873?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bylinetwitterbutton via @ConversationUK
Cases of COVID-19, the disease associated with the new coronavirus are spreading quickly in Pakistan. Considering that the nation shares borders with two global epicentres of the pandemic – Iran and China – the situation could have been worse. There have been more than 2,000 infections from the virus in Pakistan and 26 deaths linked to it, according to the most recent data.
Provincial leaders, particularly in the Sindh province, have been relatively efficient in imposing lockdowns. But there has been a lack of clarity at federal level. Much of the uncertainty came from a comment made by the prime minister, Imran Khan, in late March:
If we shut down the cities … we will save them from corona at one end, but they will die from hunger on the other side.
A consensus on slowing down the number of cases has nevertheless emerged. While there is still no official national lockdown, provincial governments have imposed their own versions. In most parts of the country, public gatherings have been banned, schools closed, and all shops other than those selling groceries or medicines shut.
Tough choices
For Pakistan, the balancing act between averting a health crisis and keeping the economy afloat has been complicated by widespread poverty. Around 39% of Pakistani households live in poverty. Because of this, an economic shutdown could produce a humanitarian disaster when the incomes of poor daily wage workers vanish.
In an emergency relief package announced in late March, the government allocated Rs150 billion (£734 million) in cash support for the poorest 12.5 million households. The government says this will benefit some 67 million people. Some of this will be funded by support from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank and will be transferred to recipients by the Pakistani government over the next few months.
While more details on the initiative are expected to emerge in the coming weeks, statements from officials indicated the government would use the infrastructure of existing social assistance programmes to disperse the cash. Given that these are reliant on digital data, administrators must be transparent about the criteria for eligibility. And they must provide ways for people to challenge decisions for those who find themselves excluded.
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The emergency cash transfer programme has been likened to a basic income scheme – even though the Rs12,000 lump sum amount is a fraction of the Rs17,500 minimum legal monthly wage for 2019.
The selection criteria for the new emergency measures are based on those for an ambitious programme called Ehsaas, which was launched in March 2019 as a set of initiatives to create social safety nets and reduce inequality. Many Ehsaas schemes rely heavily on digital data. One of the most prominent projects, known as Kafalaat uses data analytics to decide who can receive cash transfers from the government.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/pakistan-leading-way-welfare-state-world-can-learn-innovation/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw via @Telegraph
This is why we should all be looking with particular interest at the work underway in Pakistan to build a sustainable welfare state. Called Ehsaas, which in Urdu literally means ‘empathy’, the new initiative is one of the most comprehensive welfare programmes ever undertaken by a national government, with an underlying ambition to create a social safety net for Pakistan that could transform the lives of millions. It is enormously wide-ranging and ambitious.
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Despite some progress since the turn of the millennium, a quarter of people in Pakistan still live in poverty, with rates of rural poverty more than double those in urban areas. With one of the fastest growing populations in the world, Pakistan will have to create a million new jobs each year just to keep up with the number of young people entering the job market. Educational attainment is some of the worst in the region and health indicators are not promising, demonstrated by the fact that Pakistan is one of only two countries where the wild poliovirus remains endemic.
This is the context in which Ehsaas is seeking to end the cycle of poverty faced by many Pakistanis. Acknowledging that no single area will unlock this ambition alone, Ehsaas encompasses 134 policies that range from tackling corruption to creating educational opportunities to providing the elderly with decent homes.
The programme is led by Dr Sania Nishtar, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister of Pakistan on Poverty Alleviation and Social Protection, who has been mandated by Prime Minister Imran Khan to work in partnership across multiple federal ministries that these policies will be driven by, as well with provincial governments who have devolved powers including on education and health. Without a multisectoral approach, it would not be possible to create the welfare state envisioned by Ehsaas.
The launch of a countrywide public consultation was particularly important as it was the first time a public policy in Pakistan had been developed in this way and demonstrates a new level of openness and transparency. Ehsaas’s impact will hopefully go much further than the borders of Pakistan. It will provide many lessons for low-, middle- and high-income countries.
A Pakistani businessman said strict lockdown of the country's 204 million people was causing serious hardship, but it was saving lives.
The Al Jazeera news agency reported 40 deaths so far from Covid-19 in Pakistan, and more than 2600 cases of infection.
Aly Hossain is a businessman in the Punjab capital Lahore - a city of 12m, now in its 21st day of lockdown, after what was meant to be 14 days.
He said it was causing a lot of hardship, but there was little option for containing the spread of the deadly virus.
"I think lockdown was the only option - the only solution for this disease.
"Our government took the step very quickly and after that we were able to control this ... spread."
News agencies reported that Pakistan, despite its close proximity with China, remained coronavirus-free until the 26 February when a young man from Karachi tested positive after returning from Iran - one of the worst-hit countries.
After a brief hiatus following the first case, Covid-19 cases spiked as more pilgrims returning from Iran tested positive for the virus.
Hossain said Lahore was right now deserted, which he had never before seen.
"It feels like ... it's a very different kind of situation, right now. We have never seen it like this before, in my life.
"Everything is closed, businesses are closed and people are scared of what will happen in the future."
Hossain said the country faced many problems.
"I talk about my business, which is currently closed. I have to manage a little factory so we are closed, and we are at home and we don't do anything."
He said the government was trying to help but it did not have sufficient funds to relieve the scale of need.
The World Bank announced at the weekend it had approved a $US200m ($NZ340m) package to help Pakistan take effective action against the Covid-19 pandemic by strengthening the country's national healthcare systems and mitigating socio-economic disruptions.
The focus would be on the health sector, but would also help the poor and vulnerable cope with the immediate impact of the pandemic through social protection measures, food rations, and remote learning education.
Hossain supported his wife and young daughter, his parents and siblings, and said many were relying on charity and family to survive.
He was not sure when they might begin to see any improvement, but hoped it would be soon.
"We don't have any clear picture right now about what is going to happen but the government is telling us to prepare for 10 more days, then this lockdown will be over and we will be back to business."
Hossain said that in general, and despite the difficulties, the population seemed calm and hopeful of a good outcome.
"They are always very optimistic - they don't do panic and they always try to manage in any condition and in any situation, and so far we are managing it.
"We are hoping for the best."
The World Bank Group said in a news release at the weekend that it was rolling out a $US14 billion ($NZ24b) fast-track package to strengthen the Covid-19 response in developing countries and shorten the time to recovery.
The immediate response included financing, policy advice and technical assistance to help countries cope with the health and economic impacts of the pandemic.
https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1247965559796293633?s=20
It’s anyone’s guess how seriously the virus will impact India. The complete lack of preparation that has defined government responses is accompanied by a conspicuous lack of testing; as a result, no even vaguely reliable figures are available to track the trajectory of the virus, and the numbers quoted at the start of this article may well have been massive underestimates of the true figures.
One theory doing the rounds is that the virus doesn’t survive for long in temperatures above 32ºC. Another view, recently expressed by a medical professional, is that the particular strain of the virus circulating in India is much less aggressive than the strains found in badly stricken countries like Italy. Whatever the truth may be, the fact remains that India has the lowest government expenditure on public health of all the major countries in the world.
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India had 2,902 confirmed coronavirus cases and 68 deaths by April 4. That may not sound especially high for a country of more than a billion people, but the first serious government response to the global spread of the virus only came on March 24, more than three weeks after the first cases had been reported: all were from Kerala, and involved students who had returned from Wuhan.
Indeed, a month earlier, India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, brought no fewer than 125,000 people together into one stadium in Ahmedabad to give Donald Trump a sort of royal welcome on his visit to the country. Modi and his allies justified the extravagance of this event on the grounds that it would lead to major trade deals between India and the United States.
Of course, nothing of the sort happened. But the gathering also underlined the lack of seriousness that characterized the government’s approach to the impending health disaster, despite repeated warnings. Just as he was being feted in Gujarat, Trump was asking Congress for $1.25 billion to bolster US preparations for the crisis. As late as March 12, however, India’s health ministry was still announcing publicly that the COVID-19 crisis did not amount to a “health emergency.”
Since then, this utter lack of foresight and preparedness has forced Modi into a series of largely rhetorical gestures, such as appealing for — in effect, orchestrating — a one-day shutdown (called a “curfew”) that was followed the same evening by the banging of pots and pans and celebrations in the street. Modi then ordered a sudden, rapidly announced lockdown of the entire country on March 24 — at just four hours’ notice, with no real warning or preparation, let alone any carefully thought-out plan for millions of casual and migrant workers and their families, who would be forced into a sudden loss of income and accommodation in the metropolitan labor markets where they worked.
The national lockdown triggered massive reverse flows of labor, with the families of workers flooding into major bus stations in their thousands, or trekking for hundreds of miles on foot to get back to their villages. Many were forcibly stopped at state borders and sprayed with disinfecting chemicals by the authorities. The repeated displays of police brutality against these workers could not fail to recall events a month earlier in the country’s capital, when the Delhi police either refused to offer protection to the Muslim victims during a series of coordinated pogroms, or actively participated in the assaults themselves.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/04/tablighi-jamaat-india-muslims-coronavirus.html via @slate
MUMBAI, India—In the weeks since India announced the world’s largest lockdown to protect its 1.3 billion people from the spread of COVID-19, millions have participated in government-instigated shows of unity and solidarity, from collectively banging on pots and pans to lighting candles.
Unfortunately, but perhaps predictably, as criticism of aspects of the lockdown has grown, so has Islamophobia. Across cable television and India’s ubiquitous WhatsApp groups, the country’s 200 million Muslims have become a useful scapegoat for the spread of the virus. As the centerpiece of this campaign, government and media figures have implied sinister intent behind a peaceful religious gathering that was held in the nation’s capital, New Delhi.
Between March 8 and March 10, two weeks before the lockdown was announced, members of the Muslim missionary organization Tablighi Jamaat gathered from across India and Southeast Asia in the Nizamuddin neighborhood of Delhi for a long-scheduled event. Many of the missionaries then left from Delhi to visit villages and towns around India to preach a form of Sunni Islam, some of them carrying the coronavirus with them. Now the Indian government is engaged in a large-scale effort to locate and test anyone who may have recently visited the society’s global headquarters. Officials says that more than 1,400 coronavirus patients are linked to Tablighi Jamaat across 17 states. Some prominent outlets have claimed a majority of new cases in India are linked to the event, but those numbers are almost certainly distorted by the lack of widespread testing.
Angry messages have exploded across Twitter via hashtags like #CoronaJihad, #Biojihad, and #TablighiJamatVirus claiming Muslims intentionally spread the virus. These same conspiracy theories have been disseminated through the country’s ruling party officials, national television channels, and journalists asking whether “Indian agencies should seriously probe if #CoronaJihad is a ground reality.” Meanwhile, a slew of fake videos are being shared purporting to show Muslims conspiring to spread the coronavirus, including one allegedly capturing Muslim men intentionally sneezing on others to infect them. In fact, the video was filmed months ago and had no connection to the coronavirus whatsoever.
Tablighi Jamaat is a nonpolitical organization that has existed for nearly 100 years and currently operates in 150 countries. It aims to promote religious reform and instill purist Islamic values in other Muslims. It furthers this goal through preaching missions, in which members of Tablighi Jamaat connect with other Muslims in their own communities. For many of the organization’s members, it has been a challenging time. Just days ago, a tea seller in the state of Himachal Pradesh committed suicide after facing a social boycott from his community over his connection to the group, and in Delhi a man who attended a Tablighi Jamaat gathering was brutally beaten because of suspicions that he was intentionally spreading the coronavirus. Shahid Ali, the organization’s spokesperson, says they are “definitely very worried about the lives of the people” and what may come next for the group. “Shame on the media,” says Shaikh Mohammed Saeed, a Tablighi Jamaat member. “To connect the organization, which works for the welfare of society, to terrorism and to #coronajihad … I’m very shocked about it all.”
https://www.bloombergquint.com/markets/imf-s-approval-for-emergency-funds-helps-boost-pakistan-stocks
“The IMF and the Pakistani authorities are working hard for a prompt approval and disbursement” in a single installment, Teresa Daban Sanchez, IMF’s chief in Pakistan, said in a response to questions on April 8. The emergency loan will be on top of the $6 billion financial package the south Asian nation secured from the global lender last year.
The benchmark KSE-100 Index rose 2.8% to close at the highest since March 17 while the rupee gained 0.3% to 167.19 per dollar. The nation’s key stock index has recovered 17% in the past two weeks after dropping 37% in the global turmoil.
The loan will help boost the nation’s foreign exchange reserves that fell by about 13% in March, the biggest monthly drop in almost a year. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has announced multiple stimulus packages of more than 400 billion rupee rupees ($2.4 billion) to counter the shocks of the pandemic that slowed down the economy. The outbreak has infected 4,322 people and 63 have died as the country last week extended its lock down till April 14.
The nation’s economy will expand 0.8% in 2020 compared with earlier forecast of 2.8%, according to a Bloomberg survey conducted this month. Pakistan’s rupee has dropped 8.4% in about a month that makes it the second worst performer in Asia this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The currency is under pressure as global investors have sold local currency treasury bills worth $1.7 billion after eight successive months of purchases that totaled $3.1 billion.
https://theprint.in/go-to-pakistan/how-zakat-the-traditional-charity-tax-is-helping-pakistan-fight-its-coronavirus-battle/399536/ via @ThePrintIndia
The ‘zakat’, a traditional tax levied on the financially sound Muslims as a form of almsgiving to the poor, is helping Pakistan fight against the spread of coronavirus in the country. Zakat is 2.5 per cent of a family’s yearly savings in the form of cash, gold or silver.
Several people in Pakistan are offering to donate their zakat — considered one of the five pillars of Islam — to the poor and needy who are especially vulnerable to the novel coronavirus. Charitable organisations, hospitals, and even Pakistan’s top religious authority, the Council of Islamic Ideology, have called upon the Pakistan’s rich to donate their zakat early.
The zakat is usually given around Ramzan and is obligatory for financially sound Muslims.
Several organisations are using the donations to feed the hungry and provide medical assistance to those who need it. Pakistan has over 4,500 positive cases of Covid-19, and has reported 66 deaths.
With 678 new cases reported in past 24 hours, the total number of coronavirus cases in India has jumped to 6412, showed latest figures from Union Health Ministry. The death toll from COVID-19 rose to 199 while 503 patients have been cured of the virus or discharged. Maharashtra remains the worst affected state with 1,364 cases, followed by Tamil Nadu at 834 and Delhi at 720, Rajasthan at 463 and Telangana at 442.
According to ICMR, nearly 1.3 lakh samples have been tested for coronavirus so far in the country. From making masks mandatory to restricting movement of people in areas identified as COVID-19 hotspots, authorities across several states have beefed up enforcement measures to contain the deadly virus outbreak as the nationwide tally of confirmed cases neared 6,500 mark.
Odisha on Thursday became the first state to extend the lockdown further till April 30 and also announced closure of schools till June 17.
The central government has announced a ₹15,000 crore "India COVID-19 Emergency Response and Health System Preparedness Package".
Here is total coronavirus cases in India, state-wise
Andhra Pradesh - 348
Andaman and Nicobar Islands - 11
Arunachal Pradesh - 1
Assam - 29
Bihar - 39
Chandigarh - 18
Chhattisgarh - 10
Delhi - 720
Goa - 7
Gujarat - 241
Haryana - 169
Himachal Pradesh - 18
Jammu and Kashmir - 158
Jharkhand - 13
Karnataka -181
Kerala - 357
Ladakh - 15
Madhya Pradesh - 259
Maharashtra - 1364
Manipur - 2
Mizoram - 1
Odisha - 44
Puducherry - 5
Punjab - 101
Rajasthan - 463
Tamil Nadu - 834
Telangana - 442
Tripura - 1
Uttarakhand - 35
While talking to media, Chairman NDMA Lt General Mohammad Afzal stated that the consignment that arrived on Saturday was received by Minister of Climate Change Zartaj Gul at Islamabad International Airport.
He also said that Pakistan had the capacity to test virus patients across the country for another 75 days. "The supply of goods that arrived from China will be sent out to all small-scale hospitals in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and other provinces," he said.
The chairman went on to say that all supplies were purchased on the finances allocated by the federal government, and no provincial funds were used for the procurement of the medical relief equipment. “Army chief has also ensured testing facility in 11 army laboratories," he informed reporters.
Another shipment of resources from China was received by NDMA on Friday. The consignment included medical equipment such as PCR testing kits, mobile X-ray machines, Chinese KN95 masks, disposable medical masks and water-impermeable surgical gowns.
https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1249072353855717376?s=20
Despite the slight tapering this week, India’s trajectory continues to be steeper than several Asian peers such as Singapore, Japan, and even Pakistan. But it is flatter than that of the US, which has emerged as the new epicenter of the global pandemic, with the most number of active cases and deaths at the moment.
Islamabad: Pakistan has banned the export of anti-malaria drugs after several countries, including the US, started using the medicines to treat coronavirus patients, according to a media report.
The ban, which has been imposed with immediate effect, will remain till the National Coordination Committee (NCC) on COVID-19 deems necessary, according to a notification released by the Commerce Ministry on Friday amidst a spike ..
NATURAL disasters or crises expose state fragility, but also present a valuable opportunity for change. They are creative moments to transform governance through testing innovative technical solutions. Today’s ‘Ehsaas’ programme is built on the platform of the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), which was established in 2008 but went through a learning curve by incorporating the lessons learnt in the IDP crisis in 2009 and flash floods in 2010. If handled well, Covid-19 could allow us to radically transform and upgrade our social protection regime.
The National Database and Registration Authority (Nadra) can play a pivotal role in any such transformation as it has been dealing with disasters in the past. It houses the real and unique sets of biometric as well as biographical data of its 122 million citizens.
Nadra’s inclusive and robust database had proven time and again that it can increase access to critical services and benefits. The authority has been in the technology frontline in all disasters. Identity authentication and credential verification of the victims of disaster, performed by Nadra, are the key steps for any kind of relief or benefit in kind or cash transfer.
The massive flash floods in 2010 affected about 20 million people across the country. There was already a trust deficit between the donors and the previous government, triggered by mismanagement of donor funds for the 2005 earthquake.
Despite bureaucratic resistance, Nadra’s technical team used this moment to pioneer an ID-based solution that devised a secure and accurate way of identifying the affected population and ensuring transparent disbursements. Using the citizens’ database, Nadra teamed up with commercial banks to issue an ATM card, known as the ‘Watan Card’. The cash that was uploaded on these cards could be drawn by the targeted beneficiaries without any hassle.
Previously, a similar solution was rolled out to people internally displaced by the Army operation against terrorists in Swat and Malakand in 2009. This experience strengthened Nadra’s response in the wake of floods because, by this time, we had learnt to implement more stringent validation checks for ensuring the eligibility of targeted beneficiaries.
With the support of World Bank and other donors, an amount of Rs77 billion was distributed among 2.84 million families, an average of over Rs27,000 per family.
Eligible families were given ATM cards loaded with cash that were activated upon registration. The money spent by these families supported the local economy. The benefits even spread to neighbouring districts not directly affected.
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Eligible BISP beneficiaries are identified through proxy means testing. Households receiving a score of 16 and below are deemed eligible for the BISP or Ehsaas cash transfer. The same platform can be used to devise a social protection scheme for daily wagers.
The data can be refined further by reconciling it with data analytics from Nadra’s citizen database. The database contains a dedicated field that classifies the profession of ID card holders, which can be used to identify, to the best approximation, the segment of daily wagers. Complimentary databases from the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the State Bank and FBR could also be used to define a precise categorisation.
Once such a database has been developed, it can be used to roll out different schemes in future, such as vocational training, health insurance, and the like. In short, while Covid-19 has exposed our unpreparedness for dealing with a health calamity, we have at hand a valuable opportunity to develop a state-of-the-art platform for social service delivery to the most vulnerable and shock-prone segments of our society.
The most affected province due to COVID-19 virus is Punjab 2,425, followed by Sindh 1,318.
The National Disaster Management Authority is dispatching additional Personal Protection Equipment for doctors and health workers of 202 hospitals of Sindh.
https://reliefweb.int/report/pakistan/pakistan-covid-19-situation-update-12-april-2020
More than 1.5 million families will get severely affected if the lockdown continues for two months in Balochistan.
The public sector hospitals of the Islamabad city are again considering extending the closure of Outdoor Patient Departments for one month due to possible high risk of novel coronavirus spread from the facilities, The Nation learnt on Saturday.
The district administration of Rawalpindi has established a 120-bed quarantine facility at Shahbaz Sharif Sports Complex located on Sixth Road.
Minister for Aviation Ghulam Sarwar Khan on Saturday said the government would bring back 4,000 Pakistanis stranded across the world following Covid-19outbreak through special flights.
Chairman National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Lieutenant General Muhammad Afzal said Pakistan has the testing facility available for 75-days to diagnose Coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic disease.
Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday said the incentives announced by the central bank for the business community would prevent massive unemployment in the county because of the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic as the health minister warned against easing restrictions at the current stage of the outbreak.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/13/millions-people-indias-crowded-slums-cant-keep-each-other-distance-during-pandemic-lockdown/
India’s lockdown to slow the spread of the coronavirus is laying bare immense social inequalities in the country’s sprawling cities. The plight of migrant laborers has been especially alarming. Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s sudden announcement of a 21-day lockdown on March 24, migrant laborers have scrambled to return to their villages of origin in search of food and shelter, in many cases on foot.
Residents of India’s urban slums represent another population whose vulnerabilities have intensified during the lockdown. According to India’s 2011 census, 65 million people, or 17 percent of the country’s urban population, live in slum settlements. Broadly, these are low-income neighborhoods, with dense and unplanned housing, often weak or absent formal property rights, and marginalized access to basic public services, including public health systems. Most residents work in a vast, largely unregulated informal economy and depend on daily wages to support their families.
How India plans to put 1.3 billion people on a coronavirus lockdown
What does social distancing — and the suspension of movement — mean for residents of India’s slum settlements? Here are some of the central challenges facing this segment of India’s population.
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India’s slum settlements are highly congested spaces, leaving little or no room among neighbors. Take, for example, Kathputli Nagar, a settlement in central Jaipur. About 4,000 people live in Kathputli Nagar, on a small, 28,000-square-meter plot of land. One- and two-room jhuggies (shanties) are tightly packed and linked by narrow alleyways that allow just a few people to stand shoulder to shoulder.
Slum settlements often house residents who have migrated from various states in India. The community leader in Jaipur, Rajasthan quoted above pointed out that his settlement has about 5,000 residents, most of whom have migrated from villages in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. He noted that many returned to their villages after the announcement of the lockdown, joining other vulnerable migrants in India who have struggled to return to their villages of origin in the past few weeks.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/pakistan-awaits-clinical-trials-for-covid-19-treatment/1802977
Pakistani scientists are awaiting approval to start clinical trials for a treatment they claim can cure coronavirus.
A research team from Dow University of Medical Sciences, the country’s leading health institution, has devised intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) with plasma obtained from the blood of patients recovered from coronavirus, according to a statement.
The plasma teeming with anti-bodies was donated by patients after recovering from the illness.
Lab tests and animal trials were successful. The next step is to initiate clinical trials.
"This is a very important breakthrough in the war against COVID-19," professor Shaukat Ali, the head of the research team, told Anadolu Agency.
This way of treatment is safe, low risk and highly effective against coronavirus, Ali said.
He urged recovered coronavirus patients to donate blood as their plasma is the vital "raw material" for this treatment.
So far, over 1,000 coronavirus patients have recovered out of more than 5,000 reported cases in the country.
This method is also a type of passive immunization, he added.
Many countries across the world including Turkey, France and the U.S. are holding clinical trials for plasma therapy or transfusion to fight the novel virus.
However, the Pakistani doctor said, the treatment they have devised is safer and more effective than plasma transfusion as it does not carry the undesired component of blood like plasma proteins, potential bacterial and viral pathogens.
These treatments have globally been effectively used to curb other viral epidemics like MERS, SARS and Ebola, he said.
Scientists world over are grappling to find a cure for COVID-19 which has claimed over 114,000 lives globally after it appeared China last December.
More than 1.85 million people have been infected worldwide, while an upward of 434,000 have made a recovery, according to U.S.-based John Hopkins University.
India’s economy has come under pressure from the coronavirus pandemic at a time when growth was already slowing, said Neeraj Seth, BlackRock’s head of Asian credit.
That has weakened the case for for investors to buy the country’s stocks and bonds, he said.
“India entered the whole situation of Covid on a weaker footing ... and if anything, the lockdown and the slowdown of economy only put more pressure on the banking system,” he added.
The country’s banking sector has long been plagued with troubles such as large amounts of bad debt, which has hurt the economy. Growth in India’s economy — the third largest in Asia — slowed to 4.7% in the quarter ended December 2019. It was the weakest pace in more than six years.
With the country now in lockdown as the government attempts to slow the spread of the coronavirus, Seth said the Indian economy could even contract in the coming quarters.
Official data in India showed total confirmed cases of Covid-19 standing at 10,363 as of Tuesday morning, with 339 deaths. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday extended the coronavirus lockdown until May 3. The initial 21-day nationwide restrictions were supposed to have been lifted today.
Slower economic growth means that company earnings will be hurt, and that would hit the prices of stocks and certain bonds, said Seth, adding that BlackRock has been “cautious” on Indian credit at the “lower end” of the ratings spectrum.
But with India’s central bank — the Reserve Bank of India or RBI — expected to cut interest rates further, fixed income investments could benefit, he said.
“So overall, the case for fixed income, probably positive because we do expect the RBI to cut rate and the direction of monetary policy is still towards easing; the case for Indian credit, a little bit more nuanced, a bit more mixed depending on quality ... and also case for equities also remain mixed here,” said Seth.
The sudden imposition of a 21-day lockdown in India to stop the spread of the coronavirus has thrown the lives of millions of children into chaos.
Tens of thousands are calling helplines daily while thousands are going to bed hungry as the country shuts down to battle the pandemic.
With 472 million children, India has the largest child population in the world and campaigners say the lockdown has impacted around 40 million children from poor families.
These include those working in farms and fields in rural areas, as well as children who work as ragpickers in cities or sell balloons, pens and other knick-knacks at traffic lights.
Sanjay Gupta, director of Chetna, a Delhi-based charity that works with child labourers and street children, says the worst affected are the millions of homeless children who live in cities - on streets, under flyovers, or in narrow lanes and bylanes.
"During the lockdown everyone has been told to stay home. But what about the street children? Where do they go?" he asks.
According to one estimate, Delhi has more than 70,000 street children. But Mr Gupta says that number is really much higher.
And these children, he says, are usually very independent.
"They look for their own means of survival. This is the first time they need assistance.
"But they are not in the system and they are not easy to reach out to, especially in the present circumstances. Our charity workers cannot move around unless they have curfew passes," he says.
And passes are hard to obtain, because charities like Chetna are not considered essential services.
So, Mr Gupta says, they have been using innovative ways to keep in touch with the children.
"Many of these children have mobile phones, and because they generally stay in groups, we send them messages or TikTok videos about how to keep safe and what precautions they must take."
In return, he's also been receiving video messages from the children, some of which he's forwarded to me. They give a sense of the dread and uncertainty that has taken hold of their lives.
There are testimonies from worried children talking about their parents losing their jobs, wondering how they will pay the rent now or where would they find the money to buy rations?
Then, there are videos from children who have to fend for themselves.
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/04/12/world/asia/12reuters-health-coronavirus-pakistan-debt.html
8 billion/ 220 million = $36.36 per person
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India announced on Thursday a $22.6 billion economic stimulus plan that provides direct cash transfers and food security measures, offering relief to millions of poor people hit by a nationwide lockdown triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.
22.6 billion/ 1,300 million = $17.38 per person
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-india-stimulus/india-outlines-23-billion-stimulus-to-help-poor-hit-by-lockdown-idUSKBN21D0YK
https://www.dawn.com/news/1549628
KARACHI: The World Health Organisation (WHO) is supervising a research about fast-track development of Covid-19 treatment in Pakistan which would help ascertain the effectiveness of anti-Malaria drugs while treating the coronavirus patients, officials and industry sources said on Wednesday.
The development emerged after Getz Pharma — Pakistan’s only WHO-approved manufacturing facility — joined hands with the University of Health Sciences in Lahore to support research projects that could include clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug shown to be effective against the coronavirus, pushing the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for emergency approval of the product.
“Under this initiative, we are supporting the University of Health Sciences, Lahore, for research that includes clinical trials of the drug,” Khalid Mahmood, Managing Director and CEO of Getz Pharma, told Dawn. “The virus is mutating as it moves from one population. There is a need to examine the coronavirus in Pakistan more. This initiative would help on all these lines and lead to better results and other initatives,” he said.
The pharmaceutical company, meanwhile, donated 15,000 testing kits as well as 1.9 million tablets of hydroxychloroquine to the Sindh government. A statement issued by the company said that it had also donated 1,500 units of personal protective equipment (PPE) for doctors and healthcare workers, which had been dispatched to more than 50 hospitals, isolation wards, quarantine centers and clinics in Sindh, including Karachi, Hyderabad, Sukkur, Nawabshah and Larkana.
Meanwhile, adviser to the Sindh chief minister Barrister Murtaza Wahab praised the pharmaceutical company for its supplies to the provincial government, which has showed its serious frustration for not being able to import testing kits as the federal government refused to allow cargo flights for this purpose.
“Getz Pharma has donated 15,000 rapid anti-body testing kits, about 1.9 million hydroxychloroquine tablets & 1,500 personal protective equipment to #SindhGovt. On behalf of the Govt & people of Sindh, my heartfelt appreciation & gratitude to the management of Getz Pharma. Thank you,” he tweeted.
Mr Mahmood of Getz Pharma also lauded the recent efforts of the scientists at the Dow University of Health Sciences for preparing an immunoglobulin that could effectively help treat the Covid-19 patients.
Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Wednesday expressed the fear that the actual number of deaths from the coronavirus in the province is probably much higher than what is currently being reported.
Shah said his suspicion was that many infections are simply going undetected. "Known deaths, where the patient tests positive and they die, are so far 41 in Sindh. However, you may have also seen reports about dead bodies being brought to hospitals, which experts say cannot be tested for the coronavirus," he told a press conference.
He may have been alluding to reports like that published in the daily The News, which cited claims that more than 300 patients who were either dead on arrival (DOA) or extremely sick with “pneumonia-like symptoms” and died within hours of their arrival were brought to various public and private hospitals in Karachi during the past 15 days.
Dr Amir Raza, former deputy medical superintendent of the Trauma Centre at the Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi, says there may be a simpler explanation to the rise in reported deaths at hospitals.
"The fact of the matter is that the city’s private hospitals are not entertaining patients; the primary healthcare apparatus, that is the smaller private clinics in neighbourhoods, is shut. So every person, if they feel sick for any reason, would either rush to JPMC [Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre], Civil Hospital or Abbasi Shaheed Hospital. Hence, the patient volume has increased and so has the death toll at these facilities," he said.
He noted that a similar phenomenon is observed during Eid holidays, when the volume of patients increases manifold at these three hospitals because private clinics and healthcare facilities are closed or operating at low capacity.
"There is no scientific evidence to support this theory that more Covid-19 patients are dying [now]," he told Dawn.
Also read: Is TB vaccine the reason behind Covid-19's less deadly effect in Pakistan? Experts are finding out
Edhi foundation sees increase in deaths
For its part, Edhi Foundation, the city's most noted social welfare organisation, has seen an "unusual increase" in deaths in Karachi during the last two weeks, the charity's head told Dawn.com, adding that a proper medical investigation should be carried out to ascertain the cause behind these deaths amid the coronavirus contagion in the metropolis.
Faisal Edhi said they shifted a total of 387 bodies from different areas and hospitals for burial at various graveyards between April 1 and April 13 as compared to 230 during the same period last year.
"There is an increase of 60-70 per cent deaths this year in such a short period of time," Edhi said, adding, however, that they were not in a position to pinpoint the exact cause of the deaths.
He revealed that most of the deceased persons attended to by the Edhi Foundation were of an older age and faced a variety of health complications.
On the suspicion that some of these deaths may have been due to Covid-19, Edhi said their volunteers were following the advised procedures for transporting and burying such bodies to avoid being infected.
Why the jump in numbers?
Edhi pointed out that hospitals' OPDs were closed and people were facing difficulties in getting treatment or reaching the health facilities on time due to shortage of transport services because of lockdown measures imposed by the provincial government to prevent the spread of the virus.
The National Institute of Virology has provided four Real-Time PCR (Polymerase Chain Reactions) machines and qualified virology experts to the hospital so that the working burden of diagnosis could be handled easily. The provision of these PCRs has increased the testing capacity from 800 to 2,400 daily.
The announcement came on Saturday after the meeting of virology experts held at the National Institute of Virology. The meeting was also attended by Prof Dr M Iqbal Choudhary, Director of International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences (ICCBS), University of Karachi, Dr Muhammad Rashid, senior research officer of the institute of virology, Dr. Ammar Ather and other scientists.
“The hospital, which is working in collaboration with the Government of Sindh, was facing immense working-load in the process of diagnosis due to increasing number of coronavirus cases in Sindh”, said Prof Chaudhary in a statement.
At the moment, the major challenge in Pakistan is of very limited diagnostic capabilities, he said, adding that the WHO has declared the timely diagnosis of the disease as the major step in stopping the spread of COVID-19, as undetected infected individuals are the biggest source of infecting others.
Talking about the significance of this collaboration between a hospital and research facility, Prof Chaudhary said that “Indus Hospital is currently the “epicenter” of all COVID-19 related activities in Sindh, which is the worst-hit province of Pakistan with 65 per cent confirmed cases, thus we think it is an excellent example of a university-based research center helping the national health care system at the time of national health emergency”.
The experts in the meeting concluded that taking necessary precautions is the only way to protect ourselves from the contagious virus. Virology expert, Dr. Muhammad Rashid said people must avoid public gatherings. He said that large grocery stores and shopping malls should not be used for shopping, open-street shops, where people are not gathered in large numbers are better options for buying groceries. He added that children should not be allowed to go outside as these holidays were announced in case of an emergency, not for a picnic.
The army would aid civilian agencies in the implementation of the ‘Test, Trace and Quarantine’ (TTQ) strategy for containing the Covid-19 pandemic.
Chief of the Army Staff Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa was on Wednesday briefed about the TTQ strategy during his visit to the National Command and Operation Centre — the nerve-centre for the national decision-making in the fight against novel coronavirus.
TTQ is “aimed at identifying disease spread, focused clusters/hotspots to enable targeted lockdowns and need-driven resource optimisation at all levels,” a press statement issued by ISPR on Gen Bajwa’s visit to NCOC said.
The strategy is being adopted as the country gradually moves towards ‘smart’ lockdown under which a hybrid model is being followed that entails continued social distancing, limited opening up of economy, targeted isolation of vulnerable communities, and continuous capacity-building of health sector.
The easing of the lockdown was announced by Prime Minister Imran Khan on April 14.
The TTQ strategy has been formulated to keep the spread of the disease in check while different sectors open up.
The TTQ strategy involves ramping up of testing, rapidly tracing the contacts of confirmed positive cases, and effective quarantining of positive and suspected cases. This is highly labour-intensive and requires use of technology, but is considered as a better option than shutting down the economy.
An official said TTQ would now drive the national Covid-19 strategy. The military would assist the civilian agencies with their expertise and technical prowess.
A pilot project of TTQ is currently under way and its full-scale application is expected in the next few days.
“Pakistan Army in collaboration with other national institutions should take all possible measures to bring comfort to the nation in these challenging times particularly during Ramazan,” Gen Bajwa was quoted as having said.
The army chief complimented the civil-military coordination at NCOC. He “emphasised the need for continued stratified risk assessment, managing trinity of health crisis, economic slide and psycho-social impact through efficient resource management,” the ISPR said.
One of the main objectives of NCOC, besides recommending policies backed by data to the government, was to promote harmony among the provinces and various national institutions, especially the civilian-military coordination.
Federal Minister for Planning Asad Umar, who chairs NCOC, and the national coordinator Lt Gen Hamooduz Zaman have together driven the campaign while promoting cooperation among various component. “The tone and tenor of both of them is conciliatory, giving message of unity, consensus and harmony. Mr Umar has steered the whole effort with great political acumen and will while Gen Hamooduz Zaman has amplified the COAS vision of strengthening institutions and capacity building,” an official, who has been part of the NCOC proceedings, said.
Things are about to get weird at work. In many places where offices have reopened, businesses haven’t returned to business as usual. We spoke to managers and employees around the world about the aspects of pandemic work culture that are here to stay—and those that aren’t.
The Socially Distanced Desk Majid Fareed is a digital marketer for a clothing company with a 50-person office in Karachi, Pakistan. After lockdown, he returned to find the desks 12 feet apart instead of 6. “We wear masks, and each of us has sanitizer,” Fareed says. He goes in three days a week, and on those days the colleagues on either side of him work from home. For meetings, his supervisor stan
Goodbye, Groomed Work Identity “On almost every call, something unexpected happens, like a kid walks in,” says Paul Daugherty, chief technology officer of consultancy Accenture Plc. “We’re seeing each other as real people. I think it’s really powerful and has profound workforce implications.” Homebodies “None of our customers want to see us!” says Ravin Gandhi, CEO of GMM Nonstick Coatings, which
Meetings in Gallery View A weekly Beijing team meeting for Preferred Hotel Group Inc. used to take place in a conference room. “Now three people are in the office and two are at home, and each sits at her own desk,” says Caroline Klein, executive vice president of corporate communications. One unexpected benefit: “When you’re sitting next to someone in a conference room, you’re not necessarily see
We’re All in This Together “People are volunteering to do work outside of their jobs,” says Denise Broady, chief operating officer at WorkForce Software LLC, where vice presidents and above have agreed to delay their bonuses by five months so lower-level employees can receive full bonuses. “It’s having such a positive impact on the workforce—people are thinking about the collective whole, not just
The Death of the Open Office “Before Covid-19, everyone was pushing density,” says Michael Silver, chairman of commercial real estate firm Vestian. “To get more density, they were ‘hoteling’ or ‘hot desking’ ”—where employees don’t have assigned seats. “Now everyone wants to be very careful about the air they breathe,” he says. “No one wants to be in an open office or coworking environment.”
But You’ll Probably Still Commute “I hear a lot of companies saying, ‘Oh, this gave us a chance to experiment with remote work,’ ” says Barbara Larson, a management professor at Northeastern University. “I’m thinking, Oh God, please don’t make any conclusions based on these months,” when many people stuck at home had jobs unsuited to remote work. Her prediction: Full-time remote workers will increase to almost 10%, about twice the pre-pandemic rate, and part-timers will jump to 30%, from 24%.
Pakistan is using a contact tracing system - developed by its intelligence services to combat terrorism - to fight the coronavirus, the country's prime minister has said, as COVID-19 cases continue to spike in the South Asian country.
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) service is supporting the government in tracing and tracking people who may have been in contact in with those who test positive for the virus.
"The ISI has given us a great system for track and trace," said Pakistani PM Imran Khan on a live telecast of a telethon on Thursday. "It was originally used against terrorism, but now it is has come in useful against coronavirus."
International rights groups such as Amnesty International have repeatedly accused the ISI of using its surveillance programmes to abduct rights activists alongside legitimate security targets.
Having an effective "track and trace" system would enable the country to continue to reopen businesses, Khan said.
"Track and trace is the best way [to combat the virus] and ... this is the only way if you want to restart your businesses."
Cases of the coronavirus in Pakistan have spiked this week, hitting at least 11,115 cases, with 237 fatalities and more than 2,527 patients having recovered, government data shows.
The Pakistani government began to ease its lockdown last week, opening up more than a dozen sectors of the economy in order to stave off spiralling unemployment.
The government has also launched an $8bn economic stimulus package, including funds for low-income families to be disbursed through $75 grants. So far, it has disbursed roughly $390m in funds to more than 5.2 million people.
The telethon on Thursday was meant to help fund the government's welfare programme for low-income families, gathering more than $3.4m in contributions from individuals and organisations.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has recommended that the U.S. keep funding World Health Organization programs to fight polio and coronavirus in seven countries, a recognition that the group provides key services in some areas despite President Donald Trump's criticism.
State Department officials informed the National Security Council that the WHO is central to the fight against COVID-19 or polio in seven countries: Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, Sudan, Syria and Turkey, said a person familiar with the discussions. Adhering to the letter of Trump's order from last week to halt all U.S. funding to WHO for a 60- to 90-day review would therefore be unworkable.
As the number of coronavirus cases in Pakistan soared past 12,700, a mountain, none other than the Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps, was lit up with the country’s flag in a bid to express solidarity and support amid the pandemic.
Every night, the popular mountain is lit up with projections of images, including flags of countries across the globe, that have been hit with the deadly disease.
On April 25, Switzerland’s Matterhorn projected Pakistan’s flag. A picture of which was shared on Twitter.
It said, “Switzerland shows solidarity with the people of Pakistan and wish them strength.”
Artist Gerry Hofstetter started this initiative last month. His first illumination on the mountain was that of the Swiss flag, reported CNN.
Flags of other countries including the United States, Canada, Nepal and Russia have been projected on the mountain as well.
Words such as ‘hope’, ‘solidarity’ and ‘stay home’ have also been displayed.
When construction worker Abdul Rahman lost his job to Pakistan's coronavirus lockdown, his choices looked stark - resort to begging on the streets or let his family go hungry.
But the government has now given him a better option: Join tens of thousands of other out-of-work labourers in planting billions of trees across the country to deal with climate change threats.
Since Pakistan locked down on March 23 to try to stem the spread of COVID-19, unemployed day labourers have been given new jobs as "jungle workers", planting saplings as part of the country's 10 Billion Tree Tsunami programme.
Such "green stimulus" efforts are an example of how funds that aim to help families and keep the economy running during pandemic shutdowns could also help nations prepare for the next big threat: climate change.
"Due to coronavirus, all the cities have shut down and there is no work. Most of us daily wagers couldn't earn a living," Rahman, a resident of Rawalpindi district in Punjab province, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
He now makes 500 rupees ($3) a day planting trees - about half of what he might have made on a good day, but enough to get by.
"All of us now have a way of earning daily wages again to feed our families," he said.
The ambitious five-year tree-planting programme, which Prime Minister Imran Khan launched in 2018, aims to counter rising temperatures, flooding, droughts and other extreme weather conditions in the country that scientists link to climate change.
The Global Climate Risk Index 2020, issued by think-tank Germanwatch, ranked Pakistan fifth on a list of countries most affected by planetary heating over the last 20 years - even though the South Asian nation contributes only a fraction of global greenhouse gases.
As the coronavirus pandemic struck Pakistan, the 10 Billion Trees campaign was initially halted as part of social distancing orders put in place to slow the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 14,880 people in Pakistan, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
But earlier this month, the prime minister granted an exemption to allow the forestry agency to restart the programme and create more than 63,600 jobs, according to government officials.
A recent assessment by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics found that, due to the lockdown, up to 19 million people could be laid off, almost 70 perfect of them in the Punjab province.
Abdul Muqeet Khan, chief conservator of forests for Rawalpindi district, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the planting project is in "full swing".
https://wxow.com/2020/04/29/the-latest-pakistan-says-480-health-workers-test-positive/#.Xqmb6zv8-QI.twitter
A top health official in Pakistan says as many as 480 health workers have tested positive for coronavirus across the country.
"The safety of our front-line health workers is a matter of grave concern for us," said Zafar Mirza, who advises prime minister on health issues, at the military-backed National Command and Operations Centre in Islamabad.
The National Command and Operations Centre was set up by the government recently amid increasing cases of coronavirus, which stands at 15,289 recorded cases and 335 deaths.
Mirza says they have supplied the required personal protection equipment to doctors and other paramedical staff handling cases of coronavirus at government hospitals.
There are more than 220,000 doctors and about 144,000 nurses in Pakistan, but Mirza said they will provide personal protection equipment to only those who are handling patients of coronavirus. He says any health worker who dies because of handling patients of coronavirus will be given the status of "martyr" apart from financially assisting their families.
About 8,500 people are tested a day in a country of 220 million.
Pakistan is ramping up local production capacity of essential medical supplies to become secure and self-sufficient in the fight against coronavirus as the number of confirmed cases surged past 18,000.
Visiting the exhibition of medical products at the COMSTECH centre, Prime Minister Imran Khan praised the efforts of Pakistani engineers and developers who are helping on three fronts: supporting the local economy, reducing costs and helping contain COVID-19 spread.
Ministry of Science & Technology in collaboration with Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) and others organised the exhibition to showcase the country’s potential. The exhibition titled ‘Changing Calamity into Opportunity’ featured locally produced masks, personal protective equipment (PPEs), sanitisers, disinfectants, and prototypes of ventilators by public and private organisations.
The COVID-19 crisis has provided Pakistan an opportunity to locally manufacture ventilators and other key medical equipment amid the global shortage, PM Imran remarked. The government’s current focus is knowledge economy, research and development (R&D), education, science and technology, the premier said.
Pakistani engineers in public and private sectors are tirelessly working to contribute in the national fight against coronavirus outbreak, said Minister for Science and Technology, Fawad Hussain. Pakistan is currently producing PPEs, masks, sanitisers and disinfectants in large numbers. “The textile sector of Faisalabad is actively engaged in producing protective gear for health workers.” The local production may soon exceed local demand in which case the gear can be exported, he said. Fawad urged the government to expand the interaction between civil and military R&D terming it a critical measure in response to COVID-19 pandemic.
PEC officials received at least 48 proposals for locally developed mechanical ventilators of which 13 were accepted. “Currently seven types of ventilators are in final phase of approval” which would be ready within weeks at one-third of the cost of imported ventilators. The approved list includes Corvent by Pakistan Ordnance Factories (POF), PakVent-1 by DESTO, NED ventilator, VenteLight by PAF, Nuvent by NUTECH, Dignous by DIC and Umbilizer.
Pakistan’s premier defence research organisation, Defence Science and Technology Organization (DESTO), has developed its own version of N95 mask that meets global standards. The locally produced N95 would cost Rs90 as compared to the imported one priced at Rs1100, he said. National University of Science and Technology (NUST) is currently working on COVID-19 testing kit and has developed disinfectant drones. For the first time, Pakistani scientists are collaborating with global health organisations to speed up COVID vaccine process.
Ministry of Defence helping in fight against COVID-19
Minister of Defence Production Zobaida Jalal also stepped up to the COVID challenge. In early April, the engineers at the ministry’s NRTC (National Radio and Telecommunication Corporation) repaired over 171 ventilators free of cost to cope with the shortage of equipment.
She said her ministry has now developed the capability to produce around 300,000 — 400,000 litres of sanitisers, 35,000 high quality masks and 400-500 protective suits per day. POF had so far supplied around 200,000 masks and 350 PPE suits to NDMA, while another 20,000 suits were under preparation.
NRTC has also developed thermal cameras, walk through gates and VG70 ventilators and would soon begin the distribution. The minister urged for active collaboration between ministries to effectively combat COVID-19 pandemic.
@GallupPak Corona Perception Tracker
These are very unusual numbers ! But not without parallels from around the world
Crisis brings good in govt and ppls expectations set changes !
https://twitter.com/bilalgilani/status/1257212864110215169?s=21
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2214909/1-world-bank-hails-pakistans-cash-scheme-poor/
The World Bank on Tuesday hailed Pakistan’s cash transfer emergency programme, saying it would be instrumental in mitigating the impact on the economy due to novel coronavirus.“Cash transfers will be instrumental in mitigating the impact of the upcoming recession by ensuring that consumption by the poorest and vulnerable contributes to the local economies,” the World Bank said in an article published on its website.
It suggested if the fiscal space allowed to the government, the emergency cash transfers should be considered as an optimal option to rejuvenate local economies.
Last month, Prime Minister Imran Khan had announced the country’s biggest ever Ehsaas Emergency Cash Programme worth of Rs144 billion to disburse Rs12,000 each to 12 million beneficiaries who were stricken hard by the lockdown enforced due to coronavirus leading to worst economic impact to the country.
At a time when cash transfer programmes are the most widely used instruments to counter the socioeconomic fallout from the pandemic, the case of Pakistan provided a good insight to others, the article added. “No doubt this response was one of the best investments that a government could make in a crisis.The cash transfers provided purchasing power to people to meet their needs.
According to figures, nearly 24 per cent of Pakistan’s 210 million people are below the poverty line. The country requires a rapid response to protect its poor from becoming even worse off.
The national lockdown imposed on March 13 is a necessary pre-emptive step to contain the health emergency. But it compounds socioeconomic risks for the vulnerable who have lost their jobs or can’t access health and social programmes.
In addition, the pandemic puts women, who were already disadvantaged in the labor force, at greater risk as they carried the invisible burden of caring for the sick, elderly, and children.
One of Pakistan’s initial measures, with support from the World Bank, was to expand its national safety net institution, the Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP), to direct additional support to its 4.5 million women beneficiaries.
The government also scaled up its flagship cash transfer program, Ehsaas Kafalat, to include 7.5 million additional vulnerable families affected by the crisis — thus increasing by 85 per cent its annual budget dedicated to cash transfers.
Pakistan’s quick action was possible because the country has invested in programmes like BISP and Ehsaas Kafalat which formed one of South Asia’s largest social safety net systems. They provide quick registration options and reliable payments through state-of-the-art biometric technology. Their online linkage to the national ID database helps prevent duplicate payments while ensuring transparency.
While these investments have achieved results, there was room for further improvement. A move towards a dynamic system for updating the National Socio-Economic Registry (NSER) and integration among social programme databases would help keep targeting data current and ensure a two-way flow of information.
Besides avoiding duplication of effort, a centralized and integrated social registry would also provide data for informed decisions regarding socio-economic policies and initiatives.
Along with this, the governments (federal and provincial) needed to expand the primary education and children health-related conditional cash transfers to integrate aspects of long-term human development and reduction of inter-generational poverty.
The coronavirus pandemic could prove to be a watershed event in terms of enabling greater surveillance of society, the historian Yuval Noah Harari has said.
He told Hardtalk's Stephen Sackur: "People could look back in 100 years and identify the coronavirus epidemic as the moment when a new regime of surveillance took over, especially surveillance under the skin which I think is maybe the most important development of the 21st Century, is this ability to hack human beings."
Biometric data would create a system that knew human beings better than they knew themselves, he added.
https://youtu.be/gfVrin7Ybp8
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Since January, Gilead has worked with speed, care and diligence to prepare for the possibility that the company’s investigational antiviral remdesivir may be found effective against the virus that causes COVID-19. Recent clinical trial results and the decision by the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to issue an Emergency Use Authorization for remdesivir have highlighted the urgency of this work and the importance of planning for access to remdesivir globally.
Gilead’s overarching goal is to make remdesivir both accessible and affordable to governments and patients around the world, where authorized by regulatory authorities. Given the urgent needs of patients globally, the company is pursuing the following strategy to further accelerate and maximize access to remdesivir:
Gilead is in discussions with some of the world’s leading chemical and pharmaceutical manufacturing companies about their ability, under voluntary licenses, to produce remdesivir for Europe, Asia and the developing world through at least 2022. The company is also negotiating long-term voluntary licenses with several generic drugmakers in India and Pakistan to produce remdesivir for developing countries. Gilead will provide appropriate technology transfers to facilitate this production. Finally, the company is in active discussions with the Medicines Patent Pool, which Gilead has partnered with for many years, to license remdesivir for developing countries.
To further facilitate access in developing countries during this acute health crisis, Gilead is in advanced discussions with UNICEF to utilize their extensive experience providing medicines to low- and middle-income countries during emergency and humanitarian crises to deliver remdesivir using its well-established distribution networks.
Close coordination of remdesivir manufacturing will be critical. This is why Gilead is working to build a consortium of manufacturing partners – to bring efforts together to help maximize global supply. Producing the drug requires scarce raw materials, with their own lengthy production time, and specialized manufacturing capabilities with limited global capacity. Any disruption to the supply chain impacting these scarce raw materials and other manufacturing inputs could reduce the amount of remdesivir produced and increase the time it takes to do so.
Gilead is grateful to all its colleagues at health agencies and organizations around the world for their valuable input and insight, which have helped guide the company’s strategy. The company looks forward to keeping its partners and the public updated as plans move forward.
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https://www.gilead.com/news-and-press/company-statements/gilead-sciences-statement-on-remdesivir-global-supply
Call agents are trained on #coronavirus by Pakistan's National Institute of Health in #Islamabad. #PTI Government's Sehat Tahaffuz helpline is supported by #UNICEF, #WHO and Gates Foundation. https://www.unicef.org/stories/call-1166-covid-19-helpline-centre-pakistan
“How can I help you?” Pause. “Have you travelled out of the country recently?” Pause. “Please stay on the line. I am connecting you to a doctor.”
The young woman reassuring someone on the other end of the line is Sadia Saleem (pictured above), a call agent at the ‘Sehat Tahaffuz (meaning health protection in Urdu) 1166’ helpline centre in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Originally set up for parents and caregivers to get support and information about polio and other vaccines supported by UNICEF and partners, the helpline is now being inundated with tens of thousands of calls every day about the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
As part of its emergency response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the government has expanded the centre to help people get information on how to stay safe and connect them to a doctor when required.
“I received a phone call from a 75-year-old man this morning. He was so scared and confused because of the coronavirus situation. He asked if sunbathing could help him stay protected from the virus,” said Sadia. [It can't.] “I explained to him the symptoms of the virus and the preventive measures. He seemed relieved and thanked me.”
Sadia is one of 250 call agents currently staffing the helpline which operates in shifts, from 8:00 am to midnight every day, seven days a week.
More than 80 per cent of calls received every day at the helpline are related to basic information on COVID-19, such as symptoms.
“I’ve been working for the 1166 helpline since its inception. It’s stressful work, but I feel proud that I’m serving the people during this challenging time,” said Sadia. “In addition to receiving reliable information such as the symptoms of coronavirus and the contact information for the testing facility, I think most people feel some comfort just speaking with someone from the health system.”
“Initially, we were receiving about 1,000 calls a day. During the National Polio Immunization Campaign in February 2020 for example, people were calling to report missed children, clarify doubts about vaccines and lodge complaints when health and vaccine services were not working,” said Huma Shaukat, a Helpline Liaison Officer.
However, since the outbreak of COVID-19, the amount of calls has increased dramatically, to about 50,000 to 70,000 calls a day.
The number of calls grew to such an extent that the government stepped in to assign additional resources. The Prime Minister’s Office extended support to recruit an additional 165 agents and the National Institute of Health assigned 10 more doctors to the technical team.
Dr. Rabia Basri is one of the doctors working at the helpline. “Every day I receive about 40 calls, some last as long as 20 minutes,” said Dr. Rabia. “These are difficult times for everyone. I often advise people about personal hygiene and physical distancing, and if they are having symptoms, help connect them with a hospital for the coronavirus test and further medical support.”
At the helpline centre, television screens mounted on the wall display real-time information about incoming calls and graph representing the number of calls.
All call agents undergo a comprehensive training on COVID-19 by the National Institute of Health where they learn about the virus. These trainings are then followed by sessions on the helpline technology and interpersonal communication.
“The training and commitment of the call agents are very important. Otherwise the helpline will not work,” said Huma.
Many precautions are in place to make it a healthy work environment for agents and prevent the spread of COVID-19 – including checking individual temperatures at the entrance of the helpline building, providing masks to all agents and ensuring a supply of hand sanitizer.
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2221205/1-pakistan-firm-produce-effective-drug-covid-19/
As the world grapples with the novel coronavirus pandemic, there has been little good news in terms of a cure. Of all the drugs tried against Covid-19, only one – Remdesivir – has shown signs of effectiveness. Unfortunately, that too is in short supply.
In the days to come, however, Pakistan will play vital role in the effort to scale up production of the potentially lifesaving drug. The US-based pharmaceutical firm that manufactures it has entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Pakistan’s Ferozsons Laboratories along with four Indian companies to manufacture and distribute Remdesivir to 127 nations to fight the pandemic. The countries are nearly all low-income and lower-middle income ones that face significant obstacles to healthcare access.
“Under the licensing agreements, the companies have a right to receive a technology transfer of the Gilead manufacturing process for Remdesivir to enable them to scale up production more quickly. The licensees also set their own prices for the generic product they produce,” Gilead Sciences, the firm that manufactures Remdesivir, said.
The company also said in a press release that the licences were royalty-free until the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the end of the public health emergency or a vaccine was approved.
The countries Ferozson’s Laboratories and the four Indian firms will be allowed to distribute Remdisivir to include regional ones like Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka along with various others in Central and South East Asia, Africa and South America.
Gilead Sciences had earlier warned that there was only enough Remdesivir in the world for about 200,000 patients. While the drug isn’t a certain cure for Covid-19, rigorous trials have shown it can shorten a patient’s hospital stay by about four days, freeing up vital medical capacity for others suffering from the disease.
Pakistan will soon start production of the antiviral drug remdesivir, which has shown promise in treating the novel coronavirus, the country's top health official and a pharmaceutical company's chief executive announced on Friday.
Production should start "within weeks," said Osman Khalid Waheed, the chief executive of Ferozsons Laboratories Ltd, which will produce the drug. He spoke at a news conference alongside Pakistan's de facto health minister, Zafar Mirza.
"Pakistan will be among the first three countries in the world where it will not only be produced but will also be exported to the whole world," Mirza said. It will be exported to 127 countries, he said.
Remdesivir, a drug developed by Gilead Sciences, has grabbed attention as one of the most promising treatments for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus, which has killed more than 300,000 people.
To expand its access, Gilead said it signed non-exclusive licensing pacts https://in.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-gilead-sciences/gilead-ties-up-with-generic-drugmakers-for-covid-19-drug-supply-idINKBN22O2HJ with five generic drugmakers based in India and Pakistan, allowing them make and sell remdesivir for 127 countries.
"It is a commitment by us and Gilead that this medicine could be produced at minimum cost and make it most accessible," Waheed said.
Pakistan has recorded 37,218 COVID-19 cases and 803 deaths. Lockdowns to curb the disease's spread are forecast to will cause the country's economy to shrink 1% to 1.5% in 2020.
Despite a rising rate of infection, Pakistan began lifting those lockdowns last week, primarily to avert an economic meltdown.
India's $266 billion economic rescue package rests mostly on boosting company credit but contains scant new public spending, tax breaks or cash support to revive demand and prevent firms from collapsing, business leaders and economists say.
Businesses from airlines to small stores are reeling from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's nearly two-month lockdown of India's 1.3 billion people aimed at limiting the spread of the new coronavirus. Many firms say they won't survive unless they are b ..
Let us begin with the health crisis. We must not blame PM Modi for his early decisions in pandemic management. We cannot indict him for erring on the side of caution because he heard (as all global leaders did) conflicting forecasts about the progress of the pandemic. But we must ask some questions nevertheless: why did the government not listen to alternative voices about more testing at an early stage? Why did the PM not try to learn from and replicate the Kerala model? Did he allow political envy to trump national interest? Why did he not come down heavily against his supporters trying to communalise the pandemic? Once it became clear that the lockdown was not ‘breaking the chain’ or flattening the curve, why did he persist with the lockdown as the sole remedy? Did he allow his ego and self-image to trump rational course correction? And finally, why is no senior functionary (not even a minister, let alone the head of the government, as is the norm in many countries) responding to the media’s questions on the pandemic? What is the future strategy? Is there something that the government wishes to hide?
All these questions do not admit of easy answers and leave the country with the impression of a government that is lost but does not know how to admit it or ask for help.
Misplaced economic priorities
On the economic front, let us allow for the fiscal constraints that the government faces at this moment, even though it is largely responsible for this situation due to untimely waiver to corporates and inflation of revenue projections. Still, we must ask why has the Modi government not done anything to stimulate demand (despite pleas from every economist who matters)? Why the continuous pumping of liquidity despite the fact that banks have failed to use the extra liquidity made available in March? Why has the government not addressed what the industrialists, businessmen, farmers and labourers were actually asking for? Why has the government made no attempt to raise additional revenue (despite many sensible suggestions) to meet this crisis? Why use this crisis to push through a number of policy changes on labour law, agriculture, environment and investment that have nothing to do with the cause or solution to the current crisis? And, why not share the real economic situation with the country? Why dress up the “packages”, that too in such amateurish ways, so as to somehow match the magical 20-lakh crore figure?
These questions lead us to a sad answer: the economic response of the fifth-largest economy facing its worst recession and joblessness is being shaped by a bunch of too-clever-by-half economists and packaged by an ignorant and arrogant political leadership. More than saving the economy, the leaders are focused on saving themselves and their wealthy friends.
Finally, let’s turn to the Modi government’s handling of the humanitarian crisis made visible by the migrant workers who have taken to the streets. Again, let us grant that given our size and deep inequalities, some degree of distress was inevitable. But we must ask: Did the government even try to anticipate this distress and plan to alleviate it when announcing the lockdown? Why was the government surprised by the scale of the problem of the migrants (eight crore, as Sitharaman admitted in her press conference)?
Dubai: An arsenal of existing antivirals are being brought to bear against SARS-CoV-2. Most of them are manufactured in South Asia — primarily India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
It has emerged that COVID-19 is not an "atypical pneumonia" (lung disease). As it is, there's no therapy approved for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The prestigious medical journal The Lancet has pointed out, that the spectrum of disease kicked off by COVID0-19 is “broad”.
“Among hospitalised patients with COVID-19, pneumonia, sepsis, respiratory failure, and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) are frequently encountered complications,” it reported.
Moreover, it states: “Activation of coagulation pathways during the immune response to infection results in overproduction of proinflammatory cytokines leading to multiorgan injury.”
The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) has approved the first indigenously made testing kit for novel coronavirus, developed by the scientists at National University of Science and Technology (NUST) Attaur Rahman School of Applied Biosciences (ASAB).
The news was shared on Twitter by Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry, where he congratulated the developing team.
“You people have made us proud… this will bring significant cost reduction of Covid-19 tests and will also save huge import bill,” he wrote on his official handle.
The testing kit is developed in collaboration with Wuhan Institute of Virology China, DZIF Germany, Columbia University USA and Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) Rawalpindi.
These testing kits will cost one-fourth the current price for the kits used for detecting the Covid-19.
According to NUST, these assays have been developed at a time when the world is in the grip of an unprecedented pandemic novel coronavirus – and scientists and researchers are sparing no effort to ascertain remedies to this incurable disease.
According to the NUST, the assays include both conventional and real time PCR-based methods of Sybr Green and Taqman.
The testing kits have been efficiently tested on laboratory controls and patient sample.
These indigenously established assays are robust, sensitive to the target, and would soon be available at one fourth the price of imported ones.
The team comprises Associate Professor Dr Aneela Javed and Assistant Professor Dr Ali Zohaib from NUST ASAB, who have been working on establishment of these assays for diagnosis of the pandemic the country is bracing itself for.
Google's “Insights for Brands” in #Pakistan. Searches are surging for #COVID19, "healthy diets", "fast delivery", "gym at home", "Intermittent fasting", "climate change", "electric cars", "clean air", 7 in 10 Pakistanis using YouTube every month. #Lockdown https://nation.com.pk/20-Jun-2020/google-releases-pakistan-s-search-insights-for-brands
“Pakistanis and their smartphones are inseparable -- always on the lookout for the best experiences and deals within their vicinity and at the same time seeking authoritative information during these trying times,” said Faraz Azhar, Industry Head for South Asia, Google Asia Pacific. “Our research found rising levels of consumer sophistication, interest in more sustainable products and services, and a move towards a healthier lifestyle as some of the biggest drivers of behavior in the last 12 months. Also, digital video continues to boom with local content on YouTube representing Pakistan’s favorite online destination.”
In the newly released report, Google outlined five key trends that are shaping how Pakistanis search as well as their curiosity on the impact of reduced human mobility on the environment:
1. Increasingly sophisticated consumers
Consumers expect Search to understand the intent behind what they need and deliver the best, most helpful answers. They want high-quality products that are available with a convenient digital experience. 4 in 5 Pakistani consumers research products online before a purchase, and they switch between online search and video. They also want quick access to products and services: 138% growth in “near me” searches and 1.5X increase in “same day delivery” queries between 2018 to 2019. ‘Fast delivery’ searches increased by 1300% and online grocery delivery searches increased by 300% when the pandemic began.
Pakistani student spends 'golden, happy' days in China amid pandemic
2. Towards sustainability and conscious consumption
A combination of the state of the world and an overall rise in awareness has seen the rise of the environmentally conscious consumer. Over a one year period these searches have risen sharply across Pakistan: “climate change” by 1.5X, “electric cars” by 1.5X, “reusable” by 1.3X, and “cimate change” by 1.5X. Users were also curious about the visible impact on air quality and pollution levels, with searches for ‘clear skies’ increasing by 300%; ‘clean air’ by 225%; and ‘clear water’ by 217%.
3. Digital video continues to boom
Video streaming and sharing platforms are where Pakistanis get their fix of information, entertainment, news, and sports. The primary drivers are a combination of affordable data combined with the proliferation of devices and now platforms. 7 in 10 Pakistanis use YouTube every month, with searches related to “with me” increasing 150%, “teeli” by 108% and “vilage food secrets” by 168%.
4. The healthy lifestyle choice
While Pakistan has a rich and diverse culinary tradition, there has been a rise in searches for alternate diets and meal plans predicated around well-being. Searches for “daily exercise” are up 1.6X. Searches for “vegetarian cuisine”, “healthy supplements” and “intermittent fasting” have risen 1.5X. Meanwhile searches for “super food” are up by a whopping 767% and “HIIT” by 600%.
5. COVID-19 implications
With COVID-19 restricting the movement of people outdoors, Pakistanis have started looking for ways to start (or continue) their usual physical routines indoors with ‘HIIT workout’ YouTube searches growing by 600%, ‘gym at home’ by 125%, and ‘home workouts’ by 80%. With more people confined indoors, interest in mental health and well-being has also become an important factor for Pakistanis, with a surge in searches for ‘meditation’ (+56%) in March this year.
Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry said on Sunday that the first batch of ventilators manufactured in Pakistan will be delivered to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in the coming week.
In a video statement, he said that Pakistan has joined the ranks of those few countries which are producing their own ventilators.
According to the minister, the ventilator is a “complicated machine and not a lot of countries in the world have the capacity to make this”.
The minister expressed hopes that the country would be able to meet its own need for ventilators and would also be able to export the equipment.
“When the first Covid-19 case was recorded in February 26, we were not producing anything. Within a few months, we have become capable of producing our own equipment,” he said, congratulating the Pakistan Engineering Council, National Radio and Telecommunication Corporation (NRTC), scientists and technicians.
Chaudhry also tweeted earlier in the day, announcing that eight to 10 ventilators manufactured in the first batch will be delivered to the NDMA.
He said the next three designs are also in their final stages, after which Pakistan will be among the few countries in the world that manufacture complex medical machines, in accordance with European Union (EU) standards.
Emerging faster than the MNCs, the local pharmaceutical companies’ quarterly revenues surged to Rs320 billion till March 31, 2020 compared with Rs195.75 billion as of March 31, 2016. Similarly, MNCs increased their quarterly market size to Rs143.2 billion by the end of the first quarter of 2020 as against Rs100.2 billion in Q12016.
IQVIA is a global provider of information, innovative technology solutions and contract research services with operations in more than 100 countries.
Due to high rupee depreciation, overall industry growth in dollar terms in the first quarter of 2020 remained negative. In dollar terms, national companies witnessed CAGR of 2.41 percent in last four years compared with MNCs, which grew at a CAGR of negative 1.01 percent in the same period, the report said. The pharmaceuticals have remained functional during the Covid-19 pandemic and in fact registered growth.
Pakistan Economic Survey 2019-20 disclosed that the pace of contraction diminished in the pharmaceutical sector, as it registered 5.38 percent decline during July to March in FY2020 as compared to 8.66 percent decline in the corresponding period the previous year. Also, the pharmaceutical sector recorded the highest sales in March, while it fetched $1.3 million foreign direct investment (FDI) in April 2020. Analysts believe at the present growth rate the market size for pharmaceuticals would double in the next 10 years in Pakistan.
But the impact of the pandemic would be severe in the coming months, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has revised down its world GDP projections and now expects a contraction of 4.9 percent in 2020.
“Apart from the last three months, the next twelve months will also be very tough for the Pakistan economy,” said Taha Khan Javed, Head of Equities at Al Meezan Investment. “The outlook for Pakistan GDP is also precarious with growth for next fiscal year expected to be only 1-2 percent, much below the normal growth 3-5 percent we have seen in the past.”
Javed said few industries including the pharmaceuticals of the country could play a vital role in their capacity to help the national economy. He suggested the pharmaceutical industry to ramp up production capacity, and collaborate with international pharmaceutical companies to bring critical medicines in the country and eventually aim for joint venture investment of production facilities.
“The government should ensure that timely price increases are given to companies so that they have incentive to increase their investment instead of relying on only imported medicines,” he added.
------------------
Medicine spending growth in the pharmerging markets
continues to slow compared to the past five years and
is projected to grow at 5–8% through 2023. Although
China, Brazil and India have the greatest medicine
spending within the pharmerging markets, Turkey,
Egypt and Pakistan are forecast to have the greatest
growth between 2019 and 2023 (see Exhibit 4).
Pharmerging market growth continues to derive
primarily from increasing per capita use, but some
markets are seeing wider uptake of newer medicines as
patients’ ability to afford their share of costs improves
with economic growth.
https://www.iqvia.com/-/media/iqvia/pdfs/institute-reports/the-global-use-of-medicine-in-2019-and-outlook-to-2023.pdf?_=1593882831247
Pakistan has rolled out its first ever locally produced ventilators for deployment at hospitals treating coronavirus patients as the national tally of COVID-19 infections rises to nearly 232,000.
The pandemic has killed about 4,800 people since late February when it reached the South Asian nation of about 220 million; however, officials have reported a consistent decline in new infections and deaths from the infection over the past week.
Prime Minister Imran Khan Monday inaugurated the production unit and handed over the first batch of ‘SafeVent SP100’ portable ventilators to the national disaster management agency.
The facility in the northern town of Haripur has a production capacity of up to 300 ventilators a month.
An official statement quoted Khan as describing production as “a landmark achievement” for Pakistan, which has long been criticized for importing crucial medical supplies, including ventilators, despite having developed sophisticated nuclear weapons.
Pakistan’s public health care system has for decades suffered from neglect, lack of funding and corruption, which encouraged expensive hospitals in the private sector to flourish in a country where about 25 percent of the population live below the national poverty line.
Science and Technology Minister Fawad Chaudhry recently told parliament there were only 1,400 functioning ventilators in government hospitals across the country when the pandemic hit it, immediately leading to an acute shortage of the life-saving equipment for critical coronavirus patients.
Pakistan’s close ally China, however, swiftly stepped in and sent urgent relief supplies, including hundreds of ventilators, millions of masks and testing kits, worth more than $55 million, enabling Islamabad to deal with the unfolding health-related crisis.
The United States also has pledged millions of dollars in new aid for Pakistan to help combat the ailment. President Donald Trump’s administration has already donated 100 ventilators to Islamabad out of a promised 200 machines.
Chaudhry, while hailing the U.S. “gesture of friendship,” said in a statement that Pakistan, in a short span of four months, has now begun its own large-scale production of sanitizers and personal protection equipment, noting the medical supplies are already being exported to the United States.
"In the next three years, Pakistan will have its own big medical and electromagnetic industry and I have no doubts that USA will be our major client,” the minister pledged.
Chaudhry also said three new manufacturing facilities in the public and private sector are being installed for commercial production of ventilators. He noted that Pakistan annually imports medical supplies worth more than $2 billion and pays an additional $1 billon in service agreements to run the equipment.
The minister said domestic production of medical equipment will save Pakistan much-needed foreign exchange and the country will be self-sufficient in next five years so it will not have to import any medical supplies.
https://www.bloombergquint.com/global-economics/virus-protection-gear-sales-seen-reversing-pakistan-exports-fall via @BloombergQuint
Pakistan has “really moved fast into that area,” Dawood said, referring to PPE. The current year should be a better one than last, he said. South Asia’s second-largest economy, whose exports dropped 7% in the year ended June, isn’t alone in stepping up production of PPEs. Neighbor India has become the world’s second-biggest maker of PPE kits after a shortage at the beginning of the outbreak pushed it to boost local manufacturing. Supply chain disruptions caused by the pandemic has meant Pakistan secured its first sportswear order from Hugo Boss AG, according to Ijaz Akhtar Khokhar, chief coordinator at Pakistan Readymade Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association.
Pakistan plans to give tax incentives to any global brand that opens an office in the country, said trade adviser Dawood. The South Asian nation is looking to spur growth in the economy after its first contraction in 68 years in the year ended June. While exports dropped in seven out of the past 12 months, the rupee’s depreciation -- by more than 50% since late 2017 -- has made the nation’s shipments competitive globally, said Dawood. Dawlance, a local home appliances maker, exported microwaves to Bangladesh for the first time, while D.G. Khan Cement Ltd. has sent clinker to new markets such as China and Philippines. The cement maker has another order from the Philippines for supply of 20,000 tons as well as making more shipments to China, according to CFO Inayatullah Niazi.
A gradual recovery in Pakistan is expected in the fiscal year 2021 as the country’s economy reopens, says a report released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The report — “Policy Actions Taken by Countries” – reviews various steps Pakistan has taken since March to deal with the Covid-19 crisis.
The IMF notes that the near-term economic outlook of the country has worsened notably, and growth is estimated at –0.4 per cent in FY 2020.
According to this report, since mid-April, the federal government, in coordination with the provinces, has been gradually easing lockdown arrangements, by allowing ‘low-risk industries’ to restart operation and ‘small retail shops’ to reopen with newly developed Standard Operating Procedures.
In addition, restrictions on domestic and international movements have been lifted and educational institutes are expected to restart on July 15. ‘Selective’ lockdown arrangements remain in place, through the closure of shops on weekends and the sealing of specific areas of high risk.
A relief package worth Rs1.2 trillion was announced on March 24, which is now being implemented and will be pursued in the fiscal year 2020-21. The report then details various measures taken by both federal and provincial governments to ease the economic impact of this pandemic.
Key measures by the federal government: elimination of import duties on emergency health equipment; cash transfers to 6.2 million daily wage workers, cash transfers to more than 12m low-income families; accelerated tax refunds to the export industry, out of which 65pc have already been disbursed, and financial support to SMEs and the agriculture sector.
The report notes that the economic package also earmarks resources for an accelerated procurement of wheat, support for health and food supplies, an emergency contingency fund, and a transfer to the National Disaster Management Authority for the purchase of Covid-19 related equipment.
The report also mentions the provision of tax incentives to the construction sector to address the acute employment needs generated by the lockdowns.
The provincial governments, according to this report, have been also implementing supportive fiscal measures, consisting of cash grants to the low-income households, tax relief and additional health spending.
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But that confidence would prove their undoing. Their pandemic plans were built on a litany of miscalculations and false assumptions. European leaders boasted of the superiority of their world-class health systems but had weakened them with a decade of cutbacks. When Covid-19 arrived, those systems were unable to test widely enough to see the peak coming — or to guarantee the safety of health care workers after it hit.
Accountability mechanisms proved toothless. Thousands of pages of national pandemic planning turned out to be little more than exercises in bureaucratic busy work. Officials in some countries barely consulted their plans; in other countries, leaders ignored warnings about how quickly a virus could spread.
European Union checks of each country’s readiness had become rituals of self-congratulation. Mathematical models used to predict pandemic spreads — and to shape government policy — fed a false sense of security.
National stockpiles of medical supplies were revealed to exist mostly on paper, consisting in large part of “just in time” contracts with manufacturers in China. European planners overlooked the risk that a pandemic, by its global nature, could disrupt those supply chains. National wealth was powerless against worldwide shortages.
Held in high esteem for its scientific expertise, Europe, especially Britain, has long educated many of the best medical students from Asia, Africa and Latin America. On a visit to South Korea after a 2015 outbreak of the coronavirus MERS, Dame Sally Davies, then England’s chief medical officer, was revered as an expert. Upon her return home, she assured colleagues that such an outbreak could not happen in Britain’s public health system.
Now South Korea, with a death toll below 300, is a paragon of success against the pandemic. Many epidemiologists there are dumbfounded at the mess made by their mentors.--------------
Prof. Chris Whitty, Britain’s chief medical adviser, stood before an auditorium in a London museum two years ago cataloging deadly epidemics.
From the Black Death of the 14th century to cholera in war-torn Yemen, it was a baleful history. But Professor Whitty, who had spent most of his career fighting infectious diseases in Africa, was reassuring. Britain, he said, had a special protection.
“Being rich,” he explained.
Wealth “massively hardens a society against epidemics,” he argued, and quality of life — food, housing, water and health care — was more effective than any medicine at stopping the diseases that ravaged the developing world.
Professor Whitty’s confidence was hardly unique. As recently as February, when European health ministers met in Brussels to discuss the novel coronavirus emerging in China, they commended their own health systems and promised to send aid to poor and developing countries.
“Responsibility is incumbent on us, not only for Italy and Europe, but also for the African continent,” said Roberto Speranza, Italy’s health minister.
“The European Union should be ready for support,” agreed Maggie De Block, Belgium’s then health minister.
Barely a month later, the continent was overwhelmed. Instead of serving primarily as a donor, providing aid to former colonies, Western Europe became an epicenter of the pandemic. Officials once boastful about their preparedness were frantically trying to secure protective gear and materials for tests, as death rates soared in Britain, France, Spain, Italy and Belgium.
This was not supposed to happen. The expertise and resources of Western Europe were expected to provide the antidote to viral outbreaks flowing out of poorer regions. Many European leaders felt so secure after the last pandemic — the 2009 swine flu — that they scaled back stockpiles of equipment and faulted medical experts for overreacting.
The preliminary results of the country’s largest drug trial on the coronavirus — Pakistan Randomized and Observational Trial to Evaluate Coronavirus Treatment (PROTECT) — has not only established the safety of hydroxychloroquine, a drug generally used for malaria, in terms of mortality but has also shown significant recovery rates in Covid-19 patients when used in combination with two other drugs- azithromycin and oseltamivir.
The claims, as well as the results, were made public here at the University of Health Sciences (UHS), on Monday, in a ceremony, which was presided by Governor Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar and attended by Punjab Minister for Higher Education Raja Yassir Humayun Sarfraz, vice chancellors of the medical universities, researchers and faculty members.
Releasing the results of the study, UHS Vice Chancellor Prof Javed Akram, who is also its principal investigator, clarified that it aimed at evaluating hydroxychloroquine alone and in various drug combinations as treatment of the coronavirus.
“It is a multicentre, multiarm, adaptive, randomized control drug trial aimed at newly diagnosed patients,” he informed the participants in the ceremony.
He said the study found that the coronavirus patients, who received the three drugs combined, had a recovery rate of 86pc.
UHS VC Prof Javed Akram told the participants that the drug trial was launched on April 30, after the approval from the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) and the National Bioethics Committee (NBC).
He added that 12 centres, including 10 universities from eight cities, were included in the study. The study enrolled Covid patients over the age of 18 who were divided into eight groups. The patients included in the research were 60pc male and 40pc female. The three medicines were given to seven groups, each consisting of 60 to 65 patients, alone and in different combinations, while one control group was given nothing.
Prof Javed Akram disclosed that the rate of recovery from the combination of the three drugs was the highest at 86pc. The second highest recovery rate was 75pc from azithromycin. The overall recovery rate of the patients, who were given medicines, was 73.1pc while the rate of recovery without medicines was 67pc. The 27pc of patients remained Corona-positive even two weeks after taking the drug. Of the patients who were not given any medication, 33pc remained Corona-positive even after two weeks.
The UHS VC added that the recovery rate in the first week of research was 33.5pc while in the second week, it increased to 72.2pc.
Initially, the PCR test was used as a basis for research. He said a total of four deaths were reported during the study. Three deaths occurred in groups receiving single medicine, while one death occurred in the group receiving a combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin.
Mr Akram made it clear that the study was still in progress and it would involve around 9,500 patients when completed. He added that Rs30m had been spent on research so far, which the university had collected from its own resources and through donations.
King Edward Medical University VC Prof Khalid Masood Gondal, in his address, said if the standard operating procedures (SOPs) were implemented on Eidul Azha, the coronavirus would be under control by September.
Paying a tribute to the front line health workers, Governor Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar said the nation would always remember the valour with which the health workers fought against the virus.
“A memorial wall is being erected at the Governor House in recognition of the services of the health workers that would bear the names of all the front line soldiers,” he added.
The State Bank of Pakistan has granted approval to the pilot operation of an e-commerce payment gateway.
PayFast aims to capitalise on over 80 million 3G/4G subscribers in Pakistan citing massive potential of e-commerce in the country.
The approval comes on back of a boom in online payments in the midst of Covid-19 pandemic as customer’s preferences shifted from cash to cashless means.
Nevertheless cash still remains dominant in the economy with over 90% of online transactions being conducted on cash on delivery mode, the company said.
In a statement on Friday, CEO of the platform Syed Adnan Ali said digitalisation is an indispensable need of the society particularly after the Covid-19 pandemic.
Detailing about the platform, he said it aimed at providing intuitive, reliable and a high standard solution to consumers while also contributing to the economy.
He voiced hope that the platform will act as a catalyst to digitalise the economy and promote a cashless economy in Pakistan.
He added that company’s portfolio included 12 major banks of Pakistan.
However, the company added that it has low number of merchants primarily due to dearth of cost effective, robust and secure online payment solutions compatible with multiple modes of integration such as Open APIs, plugins etc.
Last year, the central bank began implementation of digital micro-payment infrastructure system which allowed transfer of funds in almost real time aimed at bringing a rapid surge in online payments in public and private sectors.
After outbreak of Covid-19 in Pakistan, a huge number of Pakistanis switched to internet and mobile banking and other payment platforms in a bid to adopt precautionary measures against the pandemic.
By Secunder Kermani
BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53742214
With around 6,000 coronavirus deaths in a population of approximately 230 million people, Pakistan appears to have fared far better than most Western countries. The UK, for example, has recorded more than 41,000 deaths in a population of around 67 million. Cities in neighbouring India, such as Delhi and Mumbai, seem to have been worse affected.
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Testing has been relatively low, and numbers are in fact decreasing. There are certainly many more coronavirus cases than the roughly 290,000 officially recorded, but the recorded drop in infections is substantiated by the fact that the proportion of tests that come back as positive has also been decreasing, as have hospital admissions.
Data obtained by the BBC from officials in the country's two largest cities, Karachi and Lahore, show that there was a significant rise in graveyard burials in June that can't be explained by coronavirus deaths alone.
For example, in Miani Sahib graveyard, the largest in Lahore, in June 2020 there were 1,176 burials this June, compared to 696 in June last year.
Only 48 of the burials this June were of officially recorded coronavirus patients. The rise is likely to be a combination of undetected coronavirus deaths, and patients suffering from other illnesses not getting treatment as hospitals were under such pressure.
Similarly, in Karachi, June 2020 saw significantly more burials than at any other time during the past two years.
However, in both cities burial figures appear to be returning to more normal rates. Even if some of the "excess deaths" are assumed to be the result of coronavirus, by international standards the mortality rate in Pakistan appears to be relatively low, though not quite as low as official data would suggest.
For leading Pakistani epidemiologist Dr Rana Jawad Asghar, the principal reason for this is Pakistan's young population. The average age in Pakistan is 22 years, compared to about 41 in the UK. The vast majority of deaths globally from the coronavirus have been of elderly patients.
Dr Asghar told the BBC that less than 4% of Pakistan's population is aged 65 and above, whereas in more developed countries the proportion is around 20-25%. "That is why we haven't seen that many deaths in Pakistan," he said.
https://www.businessinsider.com/pakistan-soup-kitchen-khana-gar-karachi-2020-8?utmSource=twitter&utmContent=referral&utmTerm=topbar&referrer=twitter
And now, in a country where 40% of the population lives below the poverty line, it has become a lifeline to thousands of struggling families during the pandemic.
At Khana Ghar, which translates to Food House, the day begins with workers rolling out dough to prepare a traditional bread called tandoori roti, which is baked in a clay oven. At lunchtime, the soup kitchen welcomes those who need a meal.
But the food is not totally free — Khana Ghar charges a token amount of 3 rupees per person, according to Parveen Saeed, who started the kitchen, which does not take a profit.
"The only logic behind it is that people are at least buying the food they are eating, so their self-respect remains intact," Saeed said. "When you give free food, people stop working. They think 'I'm getting free food for my family, and now they won't go hungry,' but when they buy it for 3 rupees, they will still work hard, earn the money, and feel like they are legitimately providing for their family."
This year, families have been talking more than ever. Make time to talk about your financial plans. Because the more we talk, the better we plan, protect and retire.
Saeed launched Khana Ghar back in 2002 after she moved to Surjani Town, a low-income neighborhood in Karachi.
A journalist by profession, she started to feed the poor after a tragic incident shook her world — a story of a local mother who killed her two children who she had been unable to feed.
"I asked her, why did you kill them?" Saeed said. "And she said one sentence: 'If your kids were hungry, you would kill them too.' That sentence can change your life, and it certainly changed mine."
"It takes me 30 minutes to get here. I walk here. I don't even have shoes, but thank God this place is here," Yameen said. "They take good care of me."
On a good day, Yameen earns 50 rupees, or 30 cents, selling plastic chairs.
But he has six children and is the only breadwinner in the family. He told us that his wife recently died from complications of COVID-19.
"I called the doctor, I called the ambulance, but my wife died in my arms," he said. "I am telling you the truth that I've really suffered."
Even death is costly these days, Yameen added, saying you need around 50,000 rupees to afford a proper funeral and burial.
Even during this trying time, Yameen says he can always count on a hot meal at Khana Ghar.
But the kitchen is being pushed to it limits. It usually serves about 3,000 people a day, but in June, at the height of the pandemic in Pakistan, over 5,000 people showed up every day.
"People said you're putting your life in danger, but we took all the precautions," she said. "We wore masks, gloves, sanitized, sprayed, and maintained social distance."
But she said that despite the challenges the soup kitchen did not stop serving food. "Poor people were telling us we will not die of the coronavirus, but what will eventually kill us is hunger," Saeed said.
With nearly 6,000 deaths in a population of 230 million people, experts say Pakistan has been spared the worst. The lockdown has mostly been lifted, and life is slowly going back to normal.
But hunger still persists. And although Parveen says that she's trying to do her best to help, it's not always enough.
https://www.icrc.org/en/document/pakistan-icrc-covid-19-response
COVID-19 poses unprecedented challenges to states and communities across the globe. Like in many other countries, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has joined the massive efforts being carried out by the government, local communities and humanitarian organizations to control the spread of the pandemic in Pakistan through a context-centered approach with a special focus on vulnerable communities. Our response is structured along the following key operational areas:
Supporting health-care facilities
Health care infrastructure forms the backbone of the response to COVID-19. To help the health sector fight this pandemic we have provided:
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), disinfection items, awareness posters, triage tents and waste management materials to four public hospitals in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly North-West Frontier Province) and the merged areas.
Technical guidance to hospital management in KP and merged areas on infection prevention and improving triage capacity.
PPE and hygiene material for staff and patients at 24 physical rehabilitation centres supported by the ICRC.
Financial support to 3,400 families of people with disabilities.
Online medical consultation and free-of-cost diabetes medicines to 1,800 patients across Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
Mughal, who was among those who received the medicines, said, "I had run out of ideas for managing my health. Then The Diabetes Centre (TDC) called and set up an online consultation that included a video medical examination. A couple of days later, officials from TDC and the basic health unit came home to give me medicines for about two months along with information on identifying symptoms of COVID-19 and how to stay safe."
https://www.cgdev.org/blog/using-what-you-have-scale-payments-covid-response-early-indications-south-asia
India
India is able to reach a high percentage of households through the combination of multiple programs including food rations, pensions, LPG cooking gas subsidies, food-for-work programs, farmer subsidies and making transfers to holders of Aadhaar-linked Jan Dhan accounts. Already, this approach appears to have been able to support quite a high proportion of poor households by scaling up food rations and various financial transfers. Initial survey results suggest that the system has provided material assistance, although some difficulties have been reported in cashing out payments and using the funds to purchase supplies.
In addition to the federal government, many states have announced their own programs to help people who fall through the system, especially migrants. But states face hard budget constraints due to expenditure ceilings imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act. Although the central government has allowed states to borrow up to 50 percent of their yearly credit needs upfront, the current uncertainty may prevent them from significantly expanding the range, scope, and scale of social assistance programs.
Lessons so far: The architecture of direct benefit transfers and JAM facilitates both scale-up and portability of benefits. But it is not possible to get an integrated view across programs which hinders coordination between the central and state-level initiatives. Many people fall through the cracks, especially migrants whose place of current residence does not match their registration location. In crises that disrupt supply chains there is an important role for efficient in-kind systems, but these have to be designed to ensure portability across states.
Pakistan
Building on the platform for BISP, the main social safety net program, Pakistan has announced a major scaleup of financial assistance to people affected by COVID-19. The Ehsaas Emergency Cash program distributes cash to 12 million families whose livelihood is severely impacted by the pandemic or its aftermath. People apply for the benefits through mobile phones. Their claim is assessed, which can include a check against databases, linking records with the national ID number. If they are approved, they can collect their benefit, after biometric authentication, at one of 17,000 cash disbursement centers that have been set up. From its inception in early April, cash has reportedly reached about one quarter of those entitled to the transfer, indicating a significant degree of state capacity to scale up transfers quickly.
Lessons so far: Pakistan is able to use its ID system and mobiles to initiate a large-scale centrally managed transfer program to uniquely identified and verified recipients. Because of the links with the National Socio-Economic Register and several other databases, the government can apply a range of exclusion rules to help target the transfers without making beneficiaries go through time-consuming application and verification procedures. Drawing on its past experience disbursing flood relief in 2007, Pakistan is also using mobile technology to offer recipients a choice of providers, although special payment points are needed because of low financial inclusion. It is not known how easily people are able to purchase supplies with their financial grants.
Bangladesh
Bangladesh has announced a range of programs but has not yet begun to implement them, and faces questions on how it will proceed. Some programs will be able to disburse through mobile money accounts, but many will not. There are also questions about the resilience of the mobile agent network: many agents provide service as a side business while their main income is from small shops, including in markets. They may not find it worthwhile to offer cash-out services if they are not able to open for normal business.
https://www.aappublications.org/news/2020/03/18/mmwr031720
All cases in 2019 came from districts Balochistan (nine cases), Punjab (five cases), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (61 cases) and Sindh (nine cases). Cases have been associated with poor vaccine coverage, with rates as low as 35% in Balochistan province. Vaccine refusals partially due to spread of false information within a community, community campaign fatigue and poor vaccine implementation are potential reasons for exacerbation of cases. In addition, three-dose coverage of OPV is highly variable among provinces in Pakistan. The status of polio eradication in Pakistan has serious implications for the success of the Global Polio Eradication Initiative.
During this time period, surveillance for both AFP cases and contaminated environmental sites has increased. Systemic sewage testing was performed at 60 sites, and 45% tested positive for WPV1 in 2019 compared with 15% in 2018 and 16% in 2017. Prior nonreservoir sites, especially in districts with detected human cases, tested positive for WPV1.
Due to this increase in cases, supplemental immunization activities have been implemented, particularly in high-risk districts. As of August 2019, 19,274 community health care providers have been deployed to 15 districts, including along official border crossings with Afghanistan and major domestic transportation routes. The Pakistan polio eradication program has performed several management, communication, community involvement and epidemiologic reviews to identify gaps to improve vaccine compliance and interrupt WPV1 transmission.
Although no cases in travelers have been reported in the U.S. since 1993, clinicians should remain vigilant and obtain travel histories in patients who present with AFP symptoms.
Detective work is at the heart of efforts to fight the pandemic. Will it be enough?
By Niha Dagia
https://thediplomat.com/2020/07/inside-pakistans-covid-19-contact-tracing/
How Can We Make Contact Tracing Successful?
To identify as many contacts as possible and as fast as possible takes a large-scale organized mechanism. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control, the staff required for contact tracing varies depending on several factors including the daily tally of cases as well as the number of contacts who have been identified, isolated, notified, and advised to monitor symptoms and practice social distancing.
With local transmission varying between 95 to 98 percent across provinces, Pakistan lacks the capacity to investigate and trace all suspected cases.
But the Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) has been on the frontline in the fight against the pandemic ever since its assets — including surveillance, data, and communication capabilities — were rerouted by the government in March 2020.
Their surveillance system has been adopted for COVID-19 contact tracing, tracking the disease’s spread, and creating awareness on prevention and containment.
Active surveillance for influenza-like illness (ILI), severe acute respiratory infections (SARI), and suspected COVID-19 cases has been integrated into the ongoing acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) active and passive surveillance system used in the fight against polio.
For contact tracing to work, the community needs to be involved. Since polio staff are already trained for door-to-door campaigns and carrying out risk perception in the community, it is now mobilizing defense against the fast-spreading virus.
“We have found significant positives amongst those traced via contact tracing and thus it has impacted on reducing further spread via self isolation, education and sensitization of the contacts,” said Dr. Sultan. “Quantification is sometimes not easy, but is being analyzed to see if a numerical value could be assigned with confidence.”
For a country that lacks a functioning healthcare system, its only defense against the virus is to contain the spread. Success will depend on the network of contract tracers, working behind the scenes to map out the pandemic in Pakistan.
https://youtu.be/uZW9hADNo08
Pakistan Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) has been on the frontline in the fight against the novel coronavirus pandemic ever since its assets — including surveillance, data, and communication capabilities — were rerouted by the government in March 2020. Their surveillance system has been adopted for COVID-19 contact tracing, tracking the disease’s spread, and creating awareness on prevention and containment. Active surveillance for influenza-like illness (ILI), severe acute respiratory infections (SARI), and suspected COVID-19 cases has been integrated into the ongoing acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) active and passive surveillance system used in the fight against polio. For contact tracing to work, the community needs to be involved. Since polio staff are already trained for door-to-door campaigns and carrying out risk perception in the community, it is now mobilizing defense against the fast-spreading virus. “We have found significant positives amongst those traced via contact tracing and thus it has impacted on reducing further spread via self isolation, education and sensitization of the contacts,” said Dr. Sultan. “Quantification is sometimes not easy, but is being analyzed to see if a numerical value could be assigned with confidence.”
One million lives have been lost to coronavirus, but it's never too late to fight back
This milestone is a difficult moment for the world, but there are glimmers of hope that encourage us now and in the near future
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
@DrTedros
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/coronavirus-deaths-cases-global-vaccine-news-trials-who-b668755.html
Pakistan deployed the infrastructure built up over many years for polio to combat Covid-19. Community health workers who have been trained to go door-to-door vaccinating children against polio have been redeployed and utilised for surveillance, contact tracing and care. This has suppressed the virus so that, as the country stabilises, the economy is also now picking up once again. Reinforcing the lesson that the choice is not between controlling the virus or saving the economy; the two go hand-in-hand.
Pakistan sent a plane-load of medical aid to the Syrian capital Damascus on Sunday, making it the largest shipment the country has received since the outbreak of the coronavirus crisis, according to Deputy Foreign Minister Dr Faisal Mikdad in a statement to Syrian state-run SANA news agency.
The aid arrived at Damascus International Airport and included medicines and medical equipment and supplies. The shipment was accompanied by a number of Pakistani officials who were received by Mikdad. The official thanked the leadership and people of Pakistan for supporting Syria not only during a difficult health crisis but in joint action against terrorism, the agency reported.
Current official statistics place the number of confirmed coronavirus cases at almost 6,000 with just over 300 reported deaths.
Pakistani Ambassador to Damascus, Saeed Mohammed Khan, said that his country had agreed to send medical aid weighing 25 tonnes to help Syria’s health sector confront the pandemic. He noted that the aid includes personal protection materials and will be distributed to hospitals and the concerned authorities operating under the Ministry of Health.
Deputy Minister of Health, Ahmad Khleifawi, also stressed the importance of this aid to support Syria’s health sector which had suffered throughout the years of war and continues to be affected by foreign imposed sanctions that prevent the arrival of many medical materials and equipment.
Despite efforts by some nations to isolate Syria diplomatically and pressure Pakistan to take a stance against Damascus, Islamabad has maintained relations with the Syrian Arab Republic and several citizens work and live there. Last month, Pakistani and Syrian officials in Islamabad reportedly considered launching direct flights between the two countries.
At least 2,304 new cases were detected after conducting 36,932 tests across the country, showing an alarming positivity rate of 6.32 per cent, it said.
According to the Covid Resilience Ranking by Bloomberg, 12 Asian countries have scored better than India in handling the coronavirus pandemic.
https://theprint.in/india/india-ranks-34th-in-global-covid-resilience-survey-placed-below-pakistan-and-bangladesh/551418/
India has been ranked 34th among 53 countries in the world that have handled the coronavirus pandemic most effectively, according to a Covid Resilience Ranking by Bloomberg.
The survey was published Tuesday and gives India a resilience score of 58.1, way below top performer New Zealand which has a score of 85.4. Pakistan, with a score of 61.7, has performed better than India and was ranked 27th, whereas Bangladesh, with a score of 64.2, was placed at the 24th position.
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Effective testing and tracing is a hallmark of almost all the top 10, embodied in South Korea’s approach. The country approved home-grown diagnostic kits within weeks of the virus’s emergence, pioneered drive-through testing stations and has an army of lightning-fast contact tracers who comb through credit card records and surveillance camera footage to track down clusters. Like Japan, Pakistan and other parts of Asia, Korea has drawn on recent epidemic experience after suffering an outbreak of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, in 2015.
In contrast, developing countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh have benefited from their relative remoteness. Their populations are also much younger on average, which has helped hold down their overall mortality rates. Limited testing and poor-quality data obscures the picture in these places, though under-reporting of cases and deaths is occuring everywhere.
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-resilience-ranking/?sref=4OaaL8PX&utm_medium=social&cmpid=socialflow-facebook-business&utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_content=business&fbclid=IwAR2NPfMOmHX1FU6tt-CVQhhN_p4bZzY04MLRWvl-Si8llGwH6VQi_DrRnLU
https://aje.io/rhncx via @AJEnglish
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/12/25/to-survive-pakistans-covid-pandemic-grocery-stores-go-online
Pakistan’s traditional grocery stores survived COVID by quickly recognising the changing needs of their customers, while app-based grocers have seen spectacular growth.
“Lahore went into lockdown on March 23. For March, April and May our business jumped by 50 to 70 percent month on month,” says Ahmad Saeed, CEO and co-founder of GrocerApp, which delivers products to the eastern city of Lahore and to Islamabad.
Before the pandemic, Saeed says, the app’s orders were growing at a steady 20 percent per month.
“I think the pandemic has pushed e-commerce years ahead – the shift that was going to take millions of dollars by investors, the pandemic has pushed it a lot,” he says.
At first, as lockdowns came into effect often with little warning, Saeed says his business struggled to meet demand.
“We realised that to cater to this demand we need to cut back to the basics of our offerings,” he says. “We realised that in the pandemic, people would realise it was okay if we didn’t have all the varieties of different products, but we needed to make sure that we do not run out of the basics.”
GrocerApp also limited the size of orders of basics like flour, rice and other necessities to prevent possible hoarding by customers.
Today, the app is back at full strength, having grown its operations to keep up with the rising demand. It now offers more than 4,000 products in Lahore. The firm expanded to cater to Islamabad in September, and Saeed says it has seen strong growth there, too.
“We launched Islamabad on September 1, and in three months, Islamabad has scaled to a point that it took Lahore two and a half years to get to,” he says.
Jarrar Shah, CEO and founder of 24Seven, a rival to GrocerApp that also serves Lahore, said his business saw similar challenges in the early days of the pandemic.
To take advantage of the spike in demand, and to ensure his company met all its orders, he changed its business model from being a digital marketplace for other stores to opening its own warehouse and fulfilling almost all its orders itself.
“When [the Lahore lockdown] happened, we started this warehouse in two weeks flat,” he says. “The lockdown was very strict initially, police were everywhere, they wouldn’t even let us deliver.”
The pandemic and lockdowns saw demand “shoot up”, and the business had to adapt, he says.
“When COVID happened, our baselines kind of shifted. Where we thought it would take the country or ecosystem three or four years to get to where people were using online and adopting it, COVID kind of brought that three-year thing overnight.”
‘With their own hands’
But not everyone is convinced Pakistan’s e-grocery boom is here to stay.
Javed Anwar is the manager at Sauda Sulf, one of the largest grocery stores in the F-11 neighbourhood of Islamabad, and says while the company’s decision to launch a website and Whatsapp-based grocery delivery service helped it survive, he is unconvinced it will lead to substantive changes in customer behaviour.
“People in Pakistan, they want to shop for themselves,” he says, sitting at a till in the store. “This trend [of online shopping] is not here in Pakistan yet. [For] groceries, customers have a mentality that they want to buy it themselves, with their own hands.”
Anwar says Sauda Sulf saw a peak of up to 250 orders a month through its website during the lockdown, but as restrictions eased over the summer, those orders dropped, too.
“In that time, [the apps] were very useful. When there was an emergency, to get those services [that you needed],” he says. “[But] there is an interaction [with the customer], and you cannot have that interaction online.”
For years, Pakistan's effort to wipe out the wild polio virus has been thwarted by public fears of foreign vaccines, largely fanned by Islamic clerics and others who warned that polio drops were part of a Western plot to sterilize the Muslim masses.
Today, pockets of resistance to the polio vaccine persist, and Pakistan remains one of only two countries, alongside Afghanistan, where polio has not yet been eradicated.
And yet thousands of Pakistanis, from college students to retirees, have volunteered to be test subjects in coronavirus vaccine trials at five urban hospitals. Since September, about 13,000 of 18,000 volunteers have participated in trials for a Chinese vaccine called CanSino. No serious side effects have been reported, and health officials hope to finish the trials and start distributing vaccines by March.
Still, even these volunteers, eager to help while Pakistan faces a resurgence of coronavirus cases and a race against time to begin public inoculations, said they had to overcome personal doubts, frightening social media rumors and opposition from their own families.
“I was aware of people talking about conspiracies, about some chip being inserted into the body, about birth control. Some in my family told me not to do it, but I didn’t care,” said one government employee in his 30s who enrolled in September. “My heart told me to do it. I just pray to God that we get rid of this fatal disease.”
The participant was among eight volunteers recently interviewed by phone in Islamabad and Karachi. All said they had heard the vaccines might be harmful but decided to sign up anyway. All spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying hospital officials had instructed that their identities be kept confidential. Each volunteer is paid $50.
Vaccines from China represent Pakistan’s best hope for inoculating its 233 million citizens in the coming year, officials say. A deeply impoverished country with a tiny health budget, Pakistan has limited hospital space, and many areas have only rudimentary health facilities.
Since the virus first hit, Pakistan has turned to China, its largest foreign economic partner and most important political ally, for help. In the spring, Beijing provided medical equipment and protective gear and sent doctors to help respond to the outbreak. Pakistani officials said the Chinese manufacturer CanSino Biologics is now offering to provide its vaccine at a favorable cost and distribute it on a “priority basis.”
While Pakistan has seen a lower number of coronavirus infections and fatalities than many countries — far fewer than the United States and neighboring India, for example — a new wave of cases has surged in the past several months. On Wednesday, Pakistan passed 10,000 deaths nationwide, and infections rose to 477,000, according to the national health ministry.
“A surge in demand for telecom services due to lockdown resulted in significant growth not only in subscriber base but also in the usage of telecom services,” the report stated. “Today, data usage stands at 4,498 Peta Bytes (FY2020) as compared to 2,545 Peta Bytes (FY2019), showing a growth of over 77pc. This substantial growth would not have been possible if the networks were not upgraded.”
The telecom sector’s titanic status in Pakistan prevails as a recent report released by the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) shows that the sector’s contribution to the national exchequer witnessed a boost of 129 percent in 2020 as compared to 2019, despite the fact that the economy was burdened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As per details from PTA’s Annual Report 2020 released today, the telecom sector proved yet again that it is one of the most valuable drivers of the national economy. Over the course of FY2020, it contributed a tremendous amount of Rs278 billion to the national exchequer, as compared to Rs121 billion back in FY2019. This represents a year-on-year growth of 129 percent.
When you think about it, the year 2020 actually held massive potential for telecom growth in general, as people all over the nation had no choice but to stay cooped up in their homes and rely on data packages and Internet services to stay connected to the world beyond.
https://www.techjuice.pk/telecom-sector-added-rs278bn-to-pakistans-exchequer-in-2020-report/
https://propakistani.pk/2021/01/15/telecom-sector-contributed-rs-278-billion-to-national-exchequer-in-2020-pta-annual-report/
The telecom sector has emerged as a prominent contributor to Pakistan’s economy and its contribution to the national exchequer has shown an increase of 129 percent in 2020 as compared to 2019 despite the economy being under pressure due to the effects of the pandemic.
As per the Pakistan Telecom Authority (PTA) Annual Report 2020 released here today, the sector contributed Rs. 278 billion (including the PTA’s deposits to the national exchequer) in the FY 2020 as compared to Rs. 121 billion in the FY 2019 registering a Year-on-Year growth of 129 percent.
A surge in the demand for telecom services due to the lockdown had resulted in significant growth not only in the subscriber base but also in the usage of telecom services.
Today, data usage stands at 4,498 Peta Bytes (FY2020) as compared to 2,545 Peta Bytes (FY 2019), showing a growth of over 77 percent. This substantial growth would not have been possible if the networks had not been upgraded. The country currently has international bandwidth connectivity of 3.1 TeraBytes and around 47,000 cell sites, of which 90 percent are 4G-enabled sites.
According to the PTA’s Annual Report, the total broadband subscriptions in the country grew by 175 percent over the last five years. Today, broadband subscribers have crossed 90 million, showing a growth of around 8 percent in the FY 2020. Additionally, Pakistan had a total broadband penetration of 42.2 percent in the FY 2020.
The telecom networks are currently available for 87 percent of the population and PTA is working with operators to increase their network coverage for the remaining 13 percent of the unserved people in Pakistan. The total teledensity now stands at 82 percent with over 172 million Mobile subscribers and 2.2 million fixed-line subscribers.
In 2020, although the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) across the economy had been affected by the global lockdowns, the telecom sector made an iconic share of 25 percent (USD 623 million) in the total FDI made in the country. The total investment made by the local operators grew by 14.25 percent, and a total of USD 734 million were invested locally.
The total revenues of the sector reached Rs. 537 billion in the FY 2020, which had mainly been generated by the mobile sector. The financial gains have been enjoyed equally by telecom consumers, the affordability of telecom services in Pakistan has improved over the years, and the per GB broadband prices are currently as low as USD 0.20, which is among the lowest in the region.
Similarly, due to the Device Identification & Registration System (DIRBS), the introduction of government revenues increased manifold with the collection of taxes on the import of handsets. The local manufacturing of handsets has enlivened the telecom ecosystem with growth in local 4G device manufacturing crossing 34 percent.
PTA Renews PTCL License for 25 Years
Pakistan also underwent trials of 5G services which were one of the few firsts in South Asia. The PTA is aiming for a spectrum auction of LTE and VoLTE services in 2021 as a precursor to 5G. It is also gearing up for an auction of a spectrum for high-speed broadband services in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.
The PTA Annual Report highlights that this year, the regulator awarded 110 licenses for numerous telecom services and issued 91 certificates for the commencement of service to operators.
The PTA conducted QoS surveys across Pakistan for data, voice, and SMS services, and the operators were directed to take corrective measures where they had underperformed. It also conducted a number of successful raids against illegal VoIP setups this year to curb grey telephony.
https://interactives.lowyinstitute.org/features/covid-performance/#rankings
The period examined spans the 36 weeks that followed every country’s hundredth confirmed case of COVID-19, using data available to 9 January 2021. Fourteen-day rolling averages of new daily figures were calculated for the following indicators:
Confirmed cases
Confirmed deaths
Confirmed cases per million people
Confirmed deaths per million people
Confirmed cases as a proportion of tests
Tests per thousand people
An average across those indicators was then calculated for individual countries in each period and normalised to produce a score from 0 (worst performing) to 100 (best performing). Collectively, these indicators point to how well or poorly countries have managed the pandemic in the 36 weeks that followed their hundredth confirmed case of COVID-19.
of the average performance over time of countries in managing the COVID-19 pandemic in the 36 weeks following their hundredth confirmed case of the virus. In total, 98 countries were evaluated, based on the availability of data across the six indicators used to construct this Index. *
Pakistan with an average score of 36.9 ranks 69 among 98 countries. New Zealand (score 94.4) tops the rankings. Among Pakistan's neighbors, Sri Lanks (score 76.8) ranks 10, Bangladesh (score 24.9) ranks 84, India (score 24.3) ranks 86 and Iran (score 15.9) ranks 95. Brazil ranks at the bottom with a score of just 4.3.
Chile, Dominic Republic, Indonesia, Mozambique, Pakistan, Sudan and Tunisia.
https://www.borgenmagazine.com/covid-19-technology-access-pool/
Several pharmaceutical companies have joined the Solidarity Call to Action, the World Health Organization’s (WHO) initiative to share research among public and private entities via a COVID-19 technology access pool. This essential movement aims to eliminate economic obstacles to accessing a vaccine. Thus far, 40 WHO Member States have joined the Solidarity Call to Action, with more on the way. The increasing membership suggests a possible global commitment to open research and tech sharing to nations that are lacking technologically. Here is a closer look at seven countries that would benefit from a global commitment to a COVID-19 technology access pool.
COVID-19 ravaged densely populated cities in Pakistan. Economists project its poverty rate, which had decreased extraordinarily throughout much of the last decade, will soar in the pandemic’s wake. The UN recommended that “making essential health services available to those in need and protecting health systems” should be prioritized. Certainly, the global community’s prioritization of a COVID-19 technology access pool aligns with the UN’s goals and suggestions for Pakistan.
Pakistan has begun importing Covid-19 vaccine for private sale, starting with 50,000 Sputnik V Russian shots.
The consignment will be the first of regular deliveries, officials said, and came as the country braces for a third wave of infections.
Officials have again closed schools and begun locking down hotspot neighbourhoods as the UK variant drives a new spike in cases. Pakistan has appeared to escape the heavy death tolls of many countries, but the coronavirus has again flared up in recent weeks.
Hospital daily admissions and the number of people in critical care were rising fast, said Asad Umar, the minister overseeing the government's Covid-19 response.
He said if compliance with the rules did not improve “we will be forced to place stronger restrictions on activities”.
“Please be very very careful. The new strain spreads faster and is more deadly.”
Pakistan's vaccination programme has until now relied on donations from China and allocations from the World Health Organisation's Covax scheme, which have yet to arrive.
The government last year gave permission for businesses to import vaccines, in a country where private hospitals and clinics fill gaps left by underfunded and overstretched public provision.
“This is the first shipment of 50,000 doses which came last night only,” an official of AG Pharma which imported the vaccine told Reuters. Local media reported another 150,000 doses were on their way.
Pakistan began vaccinating health workers six weeks ago and opened up jabs to the elderly last week. Shots have so far been donations from China, with a tranche of 17m Oxford AstraZeneca shots due from Covax, but currently delayed
It remains unclear how much private clinics will be able to charge for vaccinations. Pakistan had at first agreed that private firms would be able to sell vaccine without price caps, but that decision had been reversed, said health minister Dr Faisal Sultan.
“Now, however, there is a formula, already in vogue, to determine max price,” he said. “So yes, there is a price cap that DRAP (Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan) will recommend and get approval for,” he said.
The decision to allow commercial imports of the vaccine with an exemption on upper price caps had sparked criticism that it will create inequality.
Pakistan has a history of vaccine hesitancy and still sees stubbornly high numbers of people refuse to give their children polio shots. Officials fear a nationwide Covid vaccine roll out will be hit by similar scepticism.
But the country of around 220 million is favoured with a very young population and doctors believe they can still give jabs to 40 to 50 million people this year.
Pakistan is set to receive another batch of 500,000 doses of the Chinese-developed Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine, bringing the total number of doses procured in the last 24 hours to more than a million, the country’s health minister says.
On Wednesday, Pakistani health minister Faisal Sultan received a batch of 500,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine and 60,000 doses of the CanSino vaccine procured from northern neighbour China.
“The coronavirus vaccination campaign was started quite a while ago, and it was started with vaccines donated by the Chinese government,” Sultan told reporters at a news conference in the capital Islamabad on Wednesday, calling it “an important occasion”.
A further batch of 500,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine purchased by Pakistan is expected to arrive on Thursday, he said, bringing the total tally of vaccines in the country to more than 2.5 million.
Sultan said the government was also “finalising orders for millions of doses” of vaccines that were expected to arrive by June.
Pakistan’s rate of vaccination of fewer than 0.3 people vaccinated per 100 members of the population is one of the lowest among countries where vaccination campaigns have been launched, according to official data and the Our World in Data dataset.
On Wednesday, the government expanded its vaccine eligibility criteria to include citizens aged more than 50. Citizens who are over 60 years of age and those who work in the healthcare sector remain eligible to receive the vaccine.
Vaccines are currently being provided free of charge to citizens by the Pakistani government. The government has also approved the sale of the Russian-produced Sputnik V vaccine, but sales have not yet begun.
Pakistan continues to grapple with a strong third wave of infections countrywide, with daily new infections, active case rises and deaths all being recorded at their highest levels since the country’s first peak of cases in June 2020.
On Wednesday, the country registered 4,974 new cases of the virus, with an active case rise of 2,730 to 53,127 and 96 deaths taking the death toll to 14,530, according to official data.
The actual spread of the virus is likely to be far higher due to limited testing, with the country’s test-positive rate of 9.9 percent far higher than the World Health Organization guideline figure of 5 percent.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-vaccine-livzon/china-approves-clinical-trials-for-livzon-pharma-units-covid-19-vaccine-idUSKBN2BF20A
China’s medical products regulator has approved clinical trials for a COVID-19 vaccine candidate developed by a subsidiary of Livzon Pharmaceutical Group Inc, the Chinese company said late on Tuesday.
The potential vaccine joins more than ten candidates that Chinese scientists have moved into human testing, with four of them now cleared for wider public use and one for limited emergency use.
The protein-based injection, dubbed V-01, could be transported and stored at normal refrigerator temperatures of 2-8 degrees Celsius, Livzon Pharma said in a filing, without giving further details.
As of the end of February, Livzon had invested 67 million yuan ($10.3 million) into researching and developing the candidate, which is being jointly developed by its subsidiary based in the southern Chinese city of Zhuhai and the Institute of Biophysics of Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Separately, CanSino Biologics Inc, whose injection-based vaccine has been used in China and secured supply deals with countries including Pakistan and Mexico, said earlier on Tuesday it had obtained approval from China’s National Medical Products Administration to conduct human testing for a COVID-19 vaccine candidate administered via inhalation.
http://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/what-are-protein-subunit-vaccines-and-how-could-they-be-used-against-covid-19
HOW DO SUBUNIT VACCINES TRIGGER IMMUNITY?
Subunit vaccines contain fragments of protein and/or polysaccharide from the pathogen, which have been carefully studied to identify which combinations of these molecules are likely to produce a strong and effective immune response. By restricting the immune system’s access to the pathogen in this way, the risk of side effects is minimised. Such vaccines are also relatively cheap and easy to produce, and more stable than those containing whole viruses or bacteria.
A downside of this precision is that the antigens used to elicit an immune response may lack molecular structures called pathogen-associated molecular patterns which are common to a class of pathogen. These structures can be read by immune cells and recognised as danger signals, so their absence may result in a weaker immune response. Also, because the antigens do not infect cells, subunit vaccines mainly only trigger antibody-mediated immune responses. Again, this means the immune response may be weaker than with other types of vaccines. To overcome this problem, subunit vaccines are sometimes delivered alongside adjuvants (agents that stimulate the immune system) and booster doses may be required.
HOW EASY ARE THEY TO MANUFACTURE?
All subunit vaccines are made using living organisms, such as bacteria and yeast, which require substrates on which to grow them, and strict hygiene to avoid contamination with other organisms. This makes them more expensive to produce than chemically-synthesised vaccines, such as RNA vaccines. The precise manufacturing method depends on the type of subunit vaccine being produced. Protein subunit vaccines, such as the recombinant hepatitis B vaccine, are made by inserting the genetic code for the antigen into yeast cells, which are relatively easy to grow and capable of synthesising large amounts of protein. The yeast is grown in large fermentation tanks, and then split open, allowing the antigen to be harvested. This purified protein is then added to other vaccine components, such as preservatives to keep it stable, and adjuvants to boost the immune response – in this case alum. For polysaccharide or conjugate vaccines, the polysaccharide is produced by growing bacteria in industrial bioreactors, before splitting them open and harvesting the polysaccharide from their cell walls. In the case of conjugate vaccines, the protein that the polysaccharide is attached to must also be prepared by growing a different type of bacteria in separate bioreactors. Once its proteins are harvested, they are chemically attached to the polysaccharide, and then the remaining vaccine components added.
During the development of V-01, Shanghai Medicilon Inc. (Medicilon) undertook the drug safety evaluation. Since the establishment of the V-01 project, Medicilon has relied on a strong technical team and R&D platform to gather experts, technology, equipment and other resources in order to shorten the R&D time.
The development of a novel coronavirus vaccine is a battle against time and the virus. The colleagues of Medicilon who participated in the development of V-01 worked overtime and overcome the difficulties during the development continuously in 4 months to ensure that every experiment is carried out on time and every analysis results are provided on time.
Medicilon congratulates Livzon on its milestone and wishes V-01 will be launched soon to help prevent and control the novel coronavirus epidemic. Medicilon is proud to be a part to contribute the research and development of the novel coronavirus vaccine.
About Livzon
Livzon Pharmaceutical Group Inc., established in January 1985 with registered capital of RMB 953 million, is a comprehensive pharmaceutical group company integrating pharmaceutical R&D, production and sales, with more than 9,000 employees. In 1993, Livzon A and B shares have been listed. In 2014, the company completed the conversion from B shares to H shares, making it one of the few listed pharmaceutical companies with A+H shares in the capital market.
Livzon is committed to ensuring effective, safe and stable products. The Group’s pharmaceutical enterprises have established a sound quality management system. As of 2018, Total 31 production lines of 4 pharmaceutical subsidiaries have passed GMP certification. 28 varieties of 4 API companies have passed GMP certification and other 11 varieties have passed veterinary medicine GMP certification. 15 API varieties have passed the field inspection of international certification and obtained 20 international certification certificates.
https://gulfnews.com/world/asia/pakistan/pakistan-firm-signs-covid-19-vaccine-manufacturing-agreement-with-china-1.78286527
“The Searle Company has concluded an exclusive licensing and supply agreement with Livzon Mapharm Inc. for the recombinant novel coronavirus vaccine (V-01)” reads the firm’s April 1 letter to the Pakistan Stock Exchange (PSX). The contract also covers the manufacturing transition of the V-01 vaccine in Pakistan.
The vaccine developed by China’s Livzon Pharmaceutical Group had shown promising results in phase I and II clinical trials. The phase III trial would enroll 20,000 people in multiple countries to evaluate the efficacy, safety, and immunogenicity of the vaccine, the company said.
Among the many COVID-19 vaccine projects around the world, “V-01 has many potential advantages such as strong safety profile, high neutralising antibody titres, long durability and easy to scale up manufacturing” the document said. The protein-based vaccine V-01 could be transported and stored at normal refrigerator temperatures at 2-8 degrees Celsius.
Urgent basis
Pakistani private pharmaceutical company hoped that government officials and relevant authorities would “take up the matter on urgent basis and support for fast-track approval to carry out phase III clinical trials in Pakistan” to pave the way for local vaccine manufacturing. Searle has two state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities in Lahore and Karachi.
Experts have urged the government to initiate local production of the vaccines to speed up the vaccination process in the country of 220 million people. Health professionals believe the pandemic has opened the way for health transformation in Pakistan and offers the country the opportunity to advance its medical research and develop domestic biomanufacturing capacity to make the country self-sufficient and better prepared for the future.
Pakistan earlier announced that it would import China’s CanSino COVID-19 vaccine in bulk to package three million doses locally at the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Islamabad.
Pakistn has so far approved four vaccines for use in the country – China’s Sinopharm and Cansino, Russia’s Sputnik V and Oxford University’s AstraZeneca
Thousands of Pakistanis rushed to get inoculated in the first round of commercial sales of COVID-19 vaccines that began over the weekend, with vaccination sites in the southern city of Karachi saying on Sunday they had already sold out.
Pakistan is currently offering free vaccines to frontline healthcare workers and people over the age of 50, but the drive has thus far been slow, and last month the country allowed commercial imports by the private sector for the general public.
The first round saw the commercial sale of the two-shot Russian Sputnik V to the general public for about 12,000 Pakistani rupees ($80) for a pack of two doses.
Despite the cost, a number of centres offering the shot reported long queues, with some in Karachi waiting in line for close to three hours. Most in the queue were young Pakistanis still not eligible for government’s free vaccination.
“I am very happy to get it, since now it is required for travelling,” Saad Ahmed, 34, told Reuters on Sunday after he got his shot at an upscale private sector hospital in Karachi.
While the private sale of vaccines has begun, the government and importers are still locked in a pricing dispute.
Pakistan initially agreed to exempt imported vaccines from price caps, but later rescinded the exemption and said it would set maximum prices.
One pharmaceutical company, which had already imported 50,000 doses of Sputnik V, took the government to court, where it won an interim order allowing it to sell it until pricing is decided.
As soon as vaccination was opened for walk-in customers, there were long lines of people, Dr Nashwa Ahmed, who runs vaccination at Karachi’s South City Hospital, told Reuters.
Pictures of queues outside the hospital late into the night were shared on social media.
The hospital procured 5,000 doses of Sputnik V and in just over two days all its stock had been administered or pre-booked, said a hospital official who asked not to be identified.
Companies, including one of Pakistan’s largest banks, have also purchased large quantities to have staff inoculated, the official said.
The private sales start as the country deals with a fresh wave of COVID-19 infections and healthcare facilities are fast filling to capacity.
The number of patients now in critical care has reached 3,568, the highest since the pandemic started, a cabinet minister, Asad Umar, said on Twitter. Pakistan has thus far reported 687,908 infections and 14,778 deaths.
Gelfand studies why some cultures desire rules, why others avoid them and what gets the best results.
https://www.vox.com/2018/11/28/18115426/michele-gelfand-rule-makers-breakers-book-recode-decode-kara-swisher-podcast
On the latest episode of Recode Decode with Kara Swisher, cultural psychologist Michele Gelfand joined Kara in studio to talk about her new book, “Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our Minds.”
A distinguished professor at the University of Maryland, Gelfand studies why different cultures (in families, in different countries and within companies) accept different levels of rule-making. On the corporate level, she said an overly strict rule-abiding culture can lead to PR disasters like United Airlines dragging a paying passenger off one of its planes. But that doesn’t mean the inverse is the right way to go, either.
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I started seeing some of these contrasts, so I wanted to try to actually assess it with surveys first, in this case it was across 30 nations, try to put countries on a continuum. Even though all cultures have tight and loose elements, their rule makers and rule breakers, some cultures — in our data, Japan, Germany, Austria, Pakistan — had much stronger rules. And other cultures — like New Zealand, Netherlands, the United States in general, Brazil, Greece — they were much more permissive.
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I’ll just give an example. We did this very simple technique where we collected daily diaries from people in the United States and people in Pakistan. And they have really extreme stereotypes of each other. Pakistanis think Americans are half naked all the time. They don’t just think we’re loose, they think we’re exceedingly loose. Americans think Pakistanis ...
If they think of Pakistanis at all.
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They don’t think about Pakistanis as playing sports or reading poetry. They think about them as excessively tight. So what we did was a very simple intervention to get them out of those echo chambers, because they just meet in the media. They don’t see each other for their daily lives. We randomly assigned people in Pakistan ...
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They’re bad. Big bad wolf. We basically gave them, for a week’s time, in Pakistan, daily diaries of Americans. They were not edited, so people were still waking up with their girlfriends and still drinking more. Americans saw daily diaries of Pakistanis. They were still in the mosques more, but they saw so much broader range of situations that they were in.
By the end of the study, the cultural distance that they perceived between each other was dramatically reduced. The stereotypes that they had of each other was dramatically reduced, and they said things ...
Pakistan has procured 23 UCC refrigerators. https://www.geo.tv/latest/346645-pakistan-to-receive-first-batch-of-pfizer-biontech-vaccine-by-june
Pakistan has prepared to acquire at least 100,000 doses of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine of Pfizer BioNTech through COVAX by June this year, The News reported on Thursday.
For preparation beforehand, the country has already procured and installed ultra cold chain (UCC) refrigerators in Islamabad and all the federating units for storage of the vaccine, officials said.
Confirming the development, an official of the National Health Services, Regulations, and Coordination said: “COVAX has assured us of providing at least 100,000 doses of mRNA vaccine of Pfizer BioNTech by June this year. On their assurance, we have acquired and installed 23 UCC refrigerators throughout Pakistan."
The double-dose Pfizer vaccine has a shelf life of six months when stored at minus-75C (minus-103F), which represents a logistical challenge in many countries as it requires specialised freezers.
However, officials in Pakistan said they had already taken care of the storage issue by installing 23 UCC freezers at 16 locations across Pakistan.
Pakistan procures 23 UCC refrigerators
The official said with the financial assistance from Asian Development Bank (ADB) available with the UNICEF, Pakistan has procured 23 UCC refrigerators.
According to NHS officials, eight UCC refrigerators have been installed at EPI, NIH Islamabad, as well as the Tarlai Rural Health Centre.
Read more: NIH planning to develop single-dose coronavirus vaccine in Pakistan
One refrigerator is installed at the district health authority office in Rawalpindi, two at the principal EPI headquarter in Karachi, one at the EPI office in Hyderabad and one at the EPI headquarter in Quetta.
Similarly, one UCC refrigerator each has been installed at Lahore, Faisalabad, Multan and Gujranwala, and Gilgit.
The official noted that two UCC refrigerators have been installed in Mirpur Azad Kashmir and Muzaffarabad, while three UCC refrigerators have been installed in Peshawar, Abbottabad, and Swat.
Apart from the installation of refrigerators, specialised and trained teams had been hired to install the sophisticated equipment to ensure that precious vaccines and biological products remain safe in them.
Pakistan to receive 2.5 million doses of AstraZeneca’s Covishield vaccine
According to NHS officials, in addition to 100,000 doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, COVAX has also assured that Pakistan would be provided 2.5 million doses of AstraZeneca’s Covishield vaccine from a "non-Indian” source after Indian authorities diverted the vaccine supplies to meet domestic needs.
“COVAX has further assured to provide us 2.5 million doses of AstraZeneca by May-June from a non-Indian source," the official said.
"We are quite satisfied with the assurance and are planning to open the registration of all the adults in the country after Eid-ul-Fitr,” the official said, adding that registration of healthcare workers has also re-started till April 30, 2021, to help those who have not been vaccinated yet.
Plodding his way through the desert in remote southwest Pakistan, Roshan the camel carries priceless cargo: books for children who can no longer go to school because of coronavirus lockdowns.
The school children, who live in remote villages where the streets are too narrow for vehicles, put on their best clothes and rush out to meet Roshan. They crowd around the animal shouting "the camel is here!"
Pakistan's schools first closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, and have only opened sporadically since then, with around 50 million school-age children and university students told to continue their education from home. It's been especially difficult in places like Balochistan, where in many villages internet access is almost non-existent.
Raheema Jalal, a high school principal who founded the Camel Library project with her sister, a federal minister, says she started the library last August because she wanted children around her remote hometown to continue learning despite schools being closed.
The project is a collaboration with the Female Education Trust and Alif Laila Book Bus Society, two NGOs that have been running children's library projects in the country for 36 years.
Roshan carries the books to four different villages in the district of Kech, visiting each village three times a week and staying for about two hours each time. Children borrow books and return them the next time Roshan visits.
"I like picture books, because when I look at the pictures and the photographs, I can understand the story better," nine-year-old Ambareen Imran told Reuters.
Jalal hopes to continue and expand the project to cover more villages, but needs funding: around $118 a month is needed now each month for Roshan.
Murad Ali, Roshan's owner, says he was taken aback when he was first contacted about the project, but thought camels were the sensible mode of transport. He enjoys the trips and seeing the happy children and still earns as much as he used to when he transported firewood.
Balochistan makes up nearly half of Pakistan by area, but the sparsely populated province is also the country's most impoverished.
Story Highlights
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Pakistan quickly deployed the federal program TeleSchool for Pakistani students, and the provincial program Taleem Ghar for students in Punjab.
Viewership of these two initiatives was high during the first six months due to leveraged resources and stakeholders and a phased roll out approach, although awareness and use decreased right after.
Key challenges include improving student engagement, enhancing lesson content, increasing viewership, and leveraging TV lessons beyond the pandemic as part of blended learning.
Education TV as a remote learning tool during a pandemic
School closures as a result of the pandemic affected more than 30 million children in Pakistan, including approximately 12 million children in Punjab. According to the World Bank, at least one million children would drop out of primary and secondary school as a consequence. To ensure the continuity of learning, the country turned to educational technology (EdTech) tools like TV, radio, and mobile phones. Almost all of Pakistan (95 percent) and Punjab (90 percent) had access to TV, so this became the most viable option for remote learning for students and for teacher training.
Pakistan's Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training (MoFEPT) and the School Education Department (SED) of the province of Punjab, Pakistan went into emergency education planning mode. In April 2020, Punjab rolled out the education TV program Taleem Ghar to support remote learning for its students. This was immediately followed by a roll-out of the federal education TV program TeleSchool across Pakistan.
As a response, the World Bank produced pragmatic guides called 'Knowledge Packs' to support policymakers in making quick yet informed decisions as they work with education ministries. For example, the Education TV Knowledge Pack includes case studies such as Pakistan's to support with just-in-time pragmatic learnings from successful TV programing across countries; evidence of its effectiveness; steps and costs to start and enhance programing; and how to navigate the decision-making process. This initiative is part of the global program for Continuous and Accelerated Learning in response to COVID-19 supported with funding from the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), and implemented with UNESCO and UNICEF. Two World Bank projects have been providing financing: 'Pandemic Response Effectiveness in Pakistan (PREP)' provides funding for TeleSchool, and 'Third Punjab Education Sector Project (PESP III)' provides funding for Taleem Ghar.
Increasing student access and engagement, and the critical role of teachers
Education TV in Pakistan has been made available as on demand content on program websites, YouTube channels, and mobile apps. Punjab developed animated teacher characters for TV lessons (Miss DNA, Mr. Khawarizmi, and Miss Curie). "The biggest challenge was the disengagement of children from academic learning... The biggest question was---'how will the children learn'? We started looking at what existed and what we could start immediately," stated Umbreen Arif, Technical Advisor to the Pakistan Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training, who led TeleSchool.
Public school teachers, subject experts, and timetabling specialists were leveraged to develop TV lessons and scripts for broadcasting aligned to the national and provincial curricula, and to curate existing educational content. Teachers also supported mass communication campaigns by appearing on TV network morning shows.
Pakistan recently offered medical aid to India to help handle the COVID-19 crisis there, but the Foreign Ministry says New Delhi did not respond. Pakistan and India have a history of bitter relations and they have fought two of their wars over Kashmir since gaining independence from Britain in 1947.
Sultan said Pakistan avoided a similar scenario to India because thousands of beds were added to hospitals and the production of oxygen was increased as part of a contingency plan.
However, Sultan said that “we are not out of the woods yet" and people should get vaccinated if they want to return to a normal life.
His comments came hours after Pakistan reported one of the lowest single-day death tolls from COVID-19 in recent months, with 57 fatalities
Pakistan has repeatedly expressed grief over the COVID-19 situation in India, where authorities reported 4,454 new deaths in the last 24 hours, bringing India’s total fatalities from the virus to 303,720 out of 27 million cases.
Pakistan has registered about 903,600 cases and 20,308 confirmed deaths since the pandemic began in early 2020.
Sultan said Pakistan would try to vaccinate a third of the country's population by the end of this year. “Pakistan is offering free vaccinations to all, there is no discrimination between rich and poor," Sultan said.
The government offers Pakistanis the Chinese-made Sinovac, Sinopharm and CanSino vaccines as well as AstraZeneca doses.
Sultan said the Pakistani government has so far vaccinated more than 5 million people, compared to only 35,000 who were vaccinated with doses imported commercially.
He said Pakistan after months of wait received its first supply of COVID-19 vaccines through the U.N.-backed COVAX initiative, over 1.2 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, earlier this month. However, he said Pakistan is relying on vaccines purchased from China and enough funds were available for such purchases.
Pakistan on Wednesday opened up its coronarvirus vaccination campaign to everyone aged 19 or older as it scrambles to protect more of its 220 million people.
Pakistan initially had to deal with vaccination hesitancy and a shortage of vaccine supplies and had limited shots to people aged 30 or over.
But with purchases and donations from China and allocations from the World Health Organisation and the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, it has now secured more than 18 million doses and is keen to get them out into the population.
"We decided to open up vaccination registration for all 19 years and above," Asad Umar, minister in-charge of supervising anti-COVID operations, said in a post on Twitter.
People can sign up from Thursday, he said.
"So now registration will be open for the entire national population which is approved by health experts for COVID vaccination," Umar said.
Pakistan has reported more than 900,000 coronavirus infections and some 20,465 deaths. On Wednesday, authorities reported 2,724 new infections and 65 deaths in the previous 24 hours.
Pakistan has administered 5.3 million vaccine doses with supplies from three Chinese companies - Sinopharm, Sinovac and CanSinbio - and the Oxford-AstraZeneca shots.
Pakistan's private sector has imported nearly 50,000 doses of Russia's Sputnik-V vaccine.
Today, the registration process for the coronavirus vaccine for people aged 19 and above has begun as well. Pakistan will now be able to administer the vaccine to its entire population that has been deemed appropriate for a jab by health experts.
A senior official of the Ministry of National Health Services (NHS) said that there were 100 million people over the age of 18 years in Pakistan. “We are targeting 70 million for vaccination to achieve herd immunity,” the official of the NIH was quoted as saying on the Dawn.com website.
During the last 24 hours, 2,726 new Covid-19 cases and 75 deaths were reported across the country. The national tally has reached 911,302 while the death toll stands at 20,540. The national positivity ratio is 4.34%.
https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1401695468011233285?s=20
Pakistan administered the 10 millionth Covid-19 vaccine dose on Wednesday, with Federal Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Minister Asad Umar announcing that the authorities aimed to inoculate 70 million people by the end of this year.
He said around 300,000 people were registering themselves for vaccination against Covid-19 on a daily basis and urged people to get inoculated so that the government may ease Covid-19 restrictions.
The minister added that precautionary measures taken during the third wave of the pandemic in the country had shown positive results and a visible reduction in Covid-19 positivity rate.
Pakistan's coronavirus positivity rate has been recorded as 2.54 per cent in the past 24 hours — the second day in a row that the positivity rate remained below 3pc. According to the health ministry, 43,900 tests were conducted during the last 24 hours after which 1,118 people tested positive.
Besides, 335,790 people were administered Covid-19 vaccines on Tuesday, according to the National Command and Control Centre (NCOC).
“The more [people] we vaccinate, the better we will be protected [against Covid-19],” Umar said, appealing to people to increasingly participate in the vaccination campaign.
Federal Information and Broadcasting Minister Fawad Chaudhry, who accompanied Umar on the occasion of the administration of the 10 millionth dose, tweeted: "We have reached the milestone of administering the vaccine to 10 million people [sic]."
He also lauded the government, particularly Prime Minister Imran Khan and the NCOC, for the way it battled the pandemic.
A day earlier, Umar had announced that a call centre was being established to contact people who had not been administered the second dose of the vaccine and convince them to complete their vaccination, as reports emerged that around 300,000 recipients of the first dose had never returned to receive their second jab of the Covid-19 vaccine.
PakVac
Last week 120,000 doses of the locally manufactured PakVac vaccine — produced from the concentrate of Cansino vaccine — were launched in the country.
Announcing the production of PakVac, the government had said in a tweet that three million doses of the vaccine would be manufactured per month.
The PakVac vaccine has been developed by China's state-run pharmaceutical company Cansino and is being brought to Pakistan in a concentrated form, where it is packaged at the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Islamabad. Cansino was the first Chinese vaccine to have undergone clinical trial in Pakistan and was administered to around 18,000 people.
The company's interim efficacy results of a multi-country trial, which included Pakistan, showed the vaccine had a 65.7 per cent efficacy in preventing symptomatic coronavirus cases and a 90.98per cent success rate in stopping severe infections.
In the Pakistani subset, the efficacy of the vaccine at preventing symptomatic cases stood at 74.8per cent and 100per cent at preventing severe disease.
The launch of the first batch of PakVac doses coincided with the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan authorising the use of American Pfizer vaccine for emergency use.
The decision came in the wake of Pakistan receiving the first batch of Pfizer doses in May, when 100,000 doses were delivered under the World Health Organisation's global shared vaccine programme, Covax.
Pakistan said on Wednesday it will commit to spend $1.1 billion on procuring COVID-19 vaccine to inoculate eligible adults.
Pakistan hailed the 10 million doses of vaccines already administered as an important step toward its goal of vaccinating eligible people by year end.
The Economic Coordination Council (ECC) "expressed the government's commitment to provide $1.1 bln for procurement of COVID-19 vaccine," the finance ministry said in a statement.
It said the money will be spent to inoculate between 45 million and 65 million eligible adults this year in the country of 220 million.
The ECC approved $70 million on Wednesday to top up $130 million it sanctioned in May.
The vaccine will be procured by military run National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), the statement said.
"Thank God, we have succeeded in administering 10 million vaccine (doses)," the minister in-charge for COVID-19 operations, Asad Umar, told a ceremony to mark the milestone in Islamabad.
"Our target is to vaccinate up to 70 million people by the end of this year," he said of the total adult population eligible for the vaccination out of a 220 million nation.
Pakistan faced initial vaccination hesitancy and a shortage of supplies but it started a mass vaccination campaign late last month.
It has relied heavily on ally China for vaccine supplies with three out of six approved does coming from Chinese producers: Sinopharm, SinoVac and CanSinoBio.
Coronavirus infections surged in recent months but have started subsiding. Pakistan has registered a total 936,131 cases and 21,453 deaths.
On Wednesday, 1,118 new infections and 77 deaths were reported.
Pakistan has made an agreement to procure 13 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer, the country's health minister said on Tuesday.
An exact timeline was not yet available, health minister Faisal Sultan told Reuters, but said the doses would arrive by the end of 2021, under an agreement the government has made with the manufacturer.
The country faced initial vaccination hesitancy and a shortage of vaccine supply but it started a mass vaccination campaign late last month that is now open to all adults. It has relied heavily on ally China for vaccine supplies.
On May 29, Pakistan received 100,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine through the COVAX facility, but authorities have only administered those to people who are immunocompromised and not suitable for other vaccines.
Nearly 13 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered in the country of 220 million people so far, with about 3.5 million people fully vaccinated, according to the National Command Operation Center, which is overseeing the pandemic response.
Pakistan has primarily used Chinese vaccines - Sinopharm, CanSinoBio and Sinovac - in its inoculation drive and, earlier this month began allowing those under 40 to receive AstraZeneca, of which it has a limited supply meant for people traveling to countries that require it.
Earlier this month Pakistan approved spending $1.1 billion on procuring vaccines, part of its goal to inoculate at least 70 million people.
Pakistan has registered a total of 949,838 cases and 22,034 deaths. On Monday, 663 new infections and 27 deaths were reported. (Reporting by Umar Farooq; Editing by Stephen Coates)
https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/pakistan/overview
"....the containment measures adopted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic led to a severe contraction in economic activity during the final quarter of FY20. As a result, GDP growth is estimated to have contracted by 1.5 percent in FY20. Half of the working population saw either job or income losses, with informal and low-skilled workers employed in elementary occupations facing the strongest loss in employment. As a result, poverty incidence is estimated to have increased in FY20 from 4.4 to 5.4 percent, using the international poverty line of $1.90 PPP 2011 per day, with more than two million people falling below this poverty line. Moreover, 40 percent of households suffered from moderate to severe food insecurity. The government, therefore, focused on mitigating the adverse socioeconomic effects of the pandemic through a stimulus package equivalent to approximately 2.9 percent of GDP and a deferment of some of the fiscal adjustment measures".
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Updated estimates of the impact of COVID-19 on global poverty: Looking back at 2020 and the outlook for 2021
https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/updated-estimates-impact-covid-19-global-poverty-looking-back-2020-and-outlook-2021
Using the growth forecast from April 2020 under the $1.90-a-day poverty line, we estimated that 62 million would fall into extreme poverty globally in 2020, with South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa each contributing roughly two-fifths. We revised the global estimate to between 88 and 115 million using the June-2020 growth forecast, with about half of the new poor residing in South Asia. Using the January 2021 forecast, we now estimate between 119 and 124 additional poor globally with around 60% living in South Asia.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/852321-poverty-in-pakistan-up-from-4-4pc-to-5-4pc-wb
ISLAMABAD: The World Bank (WB) has estimated that poverty in Pakistan has increased from 4.4 per cent to 5.4 per cent. More than two million people have fallen below the poverty line in Pakistan.
The WB used the lower-middle-income poverty rate ($3.2 per day) and estimated that the poverty ratio in Pakistan stood at 39.3 per cent in 2020-21 and is projected to remain at 39.2 per cent in 2021-22 and might come down to 37.9 per cent by 2022-23.
By using the upper middle-income poverty rate ($5.5 per day) methods, the WB estimated that the poverty stood at 78.4 per cent in 2020-21 and it would be standing at 78.3 per cent in 2021-22 and is projected to come down to 77.5 per cent in 2022-23. The World Bank’s Macro Poverty Outlook on Pakistan stated that the incidence of poverty is estimated to have increased in FY20 from 4.4 to 5.4 per cent, using the international poverty line of $1.90 per day, with more than two million people falling below this poverty line. Moreover, 40 per cent of households suffered from moderate to severe food insecurity.
At a time when the WB has been showing rising trends in poverty, the government has just released poverty figures for 2018-19 and indicated that the poverty declined from 24.3 per cent in 2015-16 to 21.9 per cent in 2018-19 in the pre-COVID-19 period.
The WB stated that the government, therefore, focused on mitigating the adverse socioeconomic effects of the pandemic, and the IMF programme was temporarily put on hold. However, the containment measures adopted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic led to a collapse in economic activity during the final quarter of FY20. As a result, the GDP growth is estimated to have contracted by 1.5 per cent in FY20. Half of the working population saw either job or income losses, with informal and low-skilled workers employed in elementary occupations facing the strongest contraction in employment. As a result, the poverty incidence is estimated to elementary occupations facing the strongest contraction in employment. As a result, the poverty incidence is estimated to have increased in FY20 from 4.4 to 5.4 per cent, using the international poverty line of $1.90 per day, with more than two million people falling below this poverty line. Moreover, 40 per cent of households suffered. The WB stated that major risks to the outlook include the possibility of new waves of infections, the emergence of new vaccine-resistant strains, and setbacks in mass vaccinations. In addition, more delays in the implementation of critical structural reforms could lead to further fiscal and macroeconomic imbalances.
Pakistan’s economy has been growing slowly over the past two decades. The annual per capita growth has averaged only 2 per cent, less than half of the South Asia average, partly due to inconsistent macroeconomic policies and an under reliance on investment and exports to drive economic growth. Short periods of rapid consumption-fueled growth frequently led to sizable current account and fiscal deficits, that ultimately required policy tightening, resulting in recurrent boom-bust cycles (Figure 1).
In early FY20, which runs from July 2019 to June 2020, following one such episode of external and fiscal imbalances, the country entered a 39-month IMF Extended Fund Facility. The associated adjustment measures, including fiscal consolidation, contributed to a reduction in the imbalances over the year and improved macroeconomic stability.
The Pakistani rupee appreciated by 5.4 per cent against the US dollar, from end-June 2020 to end-December 2020, and the official foreign exchange reserves increased to $14.9 billion at end-December 2020, equivalent to 3.3 months of imports of goods and services. The public debt including guaranteed debt, reached 87.9 per cent of GDP at end-December 2020, up from 86.7 per cent of GDP at end-December 2019.
Despite the newfound glut of vaccine information, Kennedy has made it his mission to spread “awareness” firsthand through his website, and at private fundraising events like the one held at the Malibu Fig Ranch near Point Dume—an area he knows well. In 2014, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. married former Curb Your Enthusiasm star (and longtime Los Angeleno) Cheryl Hines at the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, in a ceremony attended by various family members, including Kennedy’s brother Joe and mother Ethel, as well as Larry and Cazzie David, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. The bridal party included Kennedy’s six children and Hines’s daughter. Kennedy had previously lived in the Mount Kisco area of Westchester, New York. Soon after their wedding the couple purchased a Point Dume compound comprising a four-bedroom primary residence, two guesthouses, a pool house, and a two-story treehouse, in a community that includes Julia Roberts and Chris Martin, where residents bump down manicured streets on golf carts to the keyed-access beach Little Dume. When they sold that home three years later for more than $6 million, it was described as “reminiscent of a Connecticut compound with mature trees and beautiful landscaped flat grounds.” Their new house in Brentwood, reportedly purchased for $5.2 million, is a “Monterey colonial.” Hines, while active in fundraising for cerebral palsy research—and a one-time star of a pro-whooping cough booster vaccine PSA—has seemingly remained quiet about her husband’s stance on vaccinations. Through a representative, Hines declined to comment.
“It is imperative for us to come together as we face the loss of so many of our personal freedoms,” wrote Denise Young, the executive director of the Children’s Health Defense’s California chapter, in an email to Malibu Fig Ranch event attendees, obtained by V.F. Those freedoms, she wrote, include “our choice over what we put into our bodies, uncensored media, and the right to transparency on the full effects of 5G and wireless products.” (The last is one of Kennedy’s newer crusades.) Malibu was a bastion of anti-vax sentiment long before COVID-19; in 2014, a local whooping cough outbreak aligned with a seriously lowered rate of vaccinations among children at Santa Monica and Malibu schools; that year and the next measles outbreaks also hit California hard. (For context: From 1956 to 1960, before the introduction of the measles vaccine, an average of 450 Americans died of the virus each year, at a rate of about 1 in 1,000 reported cases. Between October 1988 and May 2021, just 19 petitions for compensation for an alleged measles vaccine-related death were filed.)
“The way we promote health, and the way public health agencies promote health, is to really focus on individual level solutions,” says Jennifer Reich, a professor of sociology at the University of Colorado Denver, and the author of the 2016 book Calling the Shots: Why Parents Reject Vaccines. “People are told that their personal behaviors can mitigate disease risk. What I’ve heard from parents a lot was, We’re really healthy. We eat organic food, I breastfed my children, which provided immune protection. This idea that somehow personal behaviors and hard work—or even vigilance to pay attention to who might be seemingly infected—could successfully prevent infectious disease is just scientifically untrue.”
If the health misinformation currently spreading regarding coronavirus vaccines existed during the days of polio, it would have never been eradicated, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden's chief medical adviser, said Saturday.
Asked by CNN's Jim Acosta about the misinformation spread by Fox News regarding the Covid-19 vaccines, Fauci said, "We probably would still have polio in this country if we had the kind of false information that's being spread now."
He added, "If we had that back decades ago, I would be certain that we'd still have polio in this country."
The statement comes as dangerous falsehoods about Covid-19 vaccines are swirling and as health experts warn of the more transmissible Delta variant's increasing spread among unvaccinated Americans.
Nationwide vaccination rates are dropping, while in 46 states, the rates of new Covid cases this past week are at least 10% higher than the rates of new cases the previous week, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told Acosta the vaccines are shown to be "highly effective in preventing symptomatic, clinically apparent disease."
Yet less than half of the US population -- 48.5%, per the latest data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- are fully vaccinated. And it's the communities with lower vaccination rates that are at risk.
"Despite the rise of the Delta variant, still 97% of people who are hospitalized or killed by this virus are unvaccinated," said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia and a member of the US Food and Drug Administration's vaccine advisory committee. "If the Delta variant were escaping, essentially, immunity induced by vaccination, then you should have seen a rise in people who are vaccinated, but nonetheless were still hospitalized and killed. And that hasn't happened."
Covid-19 vaccines are effective at preventing severe disease, experts say, as rising cases threaten unvaccinated
Covid-19 vaccines are effective at preventing severe disease, experts say, as rising cases threaten unvaccinated
Among those states that have fully vaccinated less than half of their residents, the average Covid-19 case rate was 11 new cases per 100,000 people last week, compared to 4 per 100,000 among states that have fully vaccinated more than half of their residents, according to a CNN analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University.
"If you look at the extraordinary success in eradicating smallpox and eliminating polio for most of the world -- and we're on the brink of eradicating polio -- if we had had the pushback for vaccines the way we're seeing on certain media, I don't think it would've been possible at all to not only eradicate smallpox, we probably would still have smallpox," said Fauci.
Polio once was a common virus. In some young children it can affect the nerves and cause muscle weakness or paralysis. There is no treatment and no cure but getting vaccinated can prevent infection.
Just in August 2020, polio was eradicated from Africa after governments and non-profits had worked since 1996 to eliminate the virus with sustained vaccination campaigns.
Polio has now been eradicated in the Americas, Southeast Asia, Europe, most of Australasia and in Africa. Wild strains of polio circulate now in only two countries: Afghanistan and Pakistan.
https://dailytimes.com.pk/791345/ministry-of-science-and-technology-to-facilitate-vaccine-development-process-in-pakistan-shibli-faraz/
In his introductory remarks, Coordinator General, COMSTECH, Prof. Dr. M. Iqbal Choudhary, welcomed the participants and said that it is our national responsibility to use our capabilities to help in the development of human vaccines.
He assured that COMSTECH would provide every sort of possible support in this regard.
The meeting was attended by representatives from private sector leading pharmaceutical companies of Pakistan including Searle Pakistan Ltd, Ferozsons Laboratories, Amson Vaccines and Pharma, and Getz Pharma (Pvt). Ltd, Focus and Rulz Pharmaceuticals (Pvt.) Limited.
In addition, senior officials and experts of premier R&D institutions of Pakistan i.e. National Institute of Health (NIH), International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of Karachi, National Center for Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, Faisalabad, Centre Excellence for Molecular Biology, University of Punjab were present in the meeting.
This meeting was started with the introduction of participants, their existing capacities in the field of manufacturing biologics and vaccines.
Detailed discussion was carried out for the enabling role of the Government of Pakistan.
Pharmaceutical companies explained in depth the bottlenecks faced by the industries to stay abreast with changes in the manufacturing of vaccines and biologics.
The Minister for Science and Technology entrusted responsibility to COMSTECH and National Institute of Health (NIH) for preparing a position paper to facilitate the industries and create sustainable linkage between industry and Research and Development institutions of Pakistan.
ISLAMABAD, Aug 3 (Reuters) - Pakistan hit a target on Tuesday to vaccinate one million people a day against COVID-19, making strides in its inoculation campaign just weeks away from a deadline for workers in public-facing roles to obtain vaccination certificates.
The government announced last week that from the end of this month that workers in schools, shopping malls and hospitality businesses, and the transport and air travel industries would be barred from entering public offices unless they had a certificate. read more
"Happy to report that the target we had set for 1 million vaccinations in a day was crossed," Asad Umar, the minister in-charge for COVID-19 operations, said in a tweet.
Pakistan has seen soaring coronavirus infections, fuelled by the highly transmissible Delta variant, putting its poor health infrastructure under extreme pressure.
Out of a population of 220 million, more than 31 million
have received one vaccine shot, but only 6.7 million have been
fully vaccinated, according to the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC), a military run body that oversees the COVID-19 operations.
It said Pakistan registered 3,582 new cases and 67 deaths in the last 24 hours, with more than 3,300 people in critical condition. So far 23,529 people have died of COVID-19 in Pakistan, with over one million infections.
Officials say more than 70% of new cases are Delta variant infections.
After a sluggish start to the inoculation campaign, the new requirement for certificates of vaccination has led to a rush of people seeking shots, with queues stretching over a kilometre outside some vaccination centres, notably in the southern port city of Karachi, the capital of Sindh province.
The provincial government in Sindh has put extra pressure on people to get vaccinated, warning that it would withhold the salaries of government servants and block people's cell phone SIM cards unless they had the required certificates.
Around 23% of people being tested for COVID-19 in Karachi during recent days were found to have the virus, while nationwide the positive test rate stood just over 7%, according to the NCOC. [nL3N2OL3NF}
Pakistan reached a milestone in Covid vaccinations this week, health officials said: The number of people receiving shots surpassed one million a day.
But it took extraordinary measures, and much cajoling, to get there. Among other things, the government has threatened to shut off cellphone service, hold back salaries and prohibit air travel for anyone who isn’t vaccinated.
Officials say they have secured enough vaccine doses to inoculate the entire country by year’s end, and have justified the penalties as necessary for overcoming widespread vaccine hesitancy. Proof of vaccination is required for school employees, and by the end of the month the requirement will be extended to hospitality and transport workers as well as public-sector employees.
In Karachi, the country’s bustling commercial hub and most populous city, long lines formed outside vaccination centers this week, and some fights broke out as people lost patience.
“I do not trust vaccines, not even in the presence of the coronavirus,” said Shahid Khan, a driver at a private company, who was waiting for a shot outside Karachi’s largest vaccination center. “But I am forced to get inoculated so I can get my August salary and prevent my cellphone service from being blocked.”
About 26 million of Pakistan’s 220 million people have received at least one vaccine dose, according to the government. Pakistan has largely relied on Chinese-made vaccines, including those made by Sinopharm and Sinovac, with smaller supplies of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines available since June.
Vaccine hesitancy is not new to Pakistan. The country has already grappled with disinformation around other long-established vaccines, particularly for polio, which remains endemic in the country.
Coronavirus cases are rising across the country, fueled by the highly transmissible Delta variant. Pakistan is reporting an average of nearly 4,000 infections per day, lower than a previous surge in April but a 56 percent increase from two weeks ago, according to New York Times data.
In Karachi in late July, more than 25 percent of coronavirus tests came back positive, suggesting that a huge number of cases were going undetected. Officially, more than 23,000 people in Pakistan have died of the virus since the pandemic began, and about one million have been recorded as infected, but those numbers are almost certainly undercounts as testing has not been widely available.
At vaccination centers in Karachi, most people were not wearing masks or following social distancing guidelines, raising concerns among health experts that the rush for shots could fuel the spread of the virus. To prevent overcrowding, the government declared that at least 11 vaccination centers in Karachi would operate around the clock throughout the week, and that health authorities would send mobile vaccination teams into neighborhoods.
“After the government’s warnings, it seems the entire Karachi came out to the vaccination centers,” said Shabbir Ahmed, a data entry officer at a vaccination center in Karachi. Keeping their cellphone service, he said, was “more important for people than their lives.”
https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1425837073227935755?s=20
Depending on the country, Covid-19 vaccination campaigns started in December 2020. Since the available quantities of vaccine are not sufficient to meet the needs of the population at once, people at risk and those directly involved in the fight against the pandemic are the first to be vaccinated.
The table below ranks countries according to the total number of doses administered as of 12 August 2021.
In the absence of a global database, the statistics are based on publications from country-specific health agencies and ministries
https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1426760799914102789?s=20
https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1443644359866388500?s=20
National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) chief Asad Umar announced earlier in the day that cities with a slow pace of vaccination as well as unvaccinated individuals will be imposed with higher restrictions.
He said in a tweet, “The only way out of the Covid pandemic is to get a high percentage of citizens vaccinated."
The NCOC chief added, “Therefore as part of the strategy to reward citizens and cities which vaccinate, there will be higher restrictions on cities with a low level of vaccination and on citizens who are not vaccinated.”
“We have set the target of vaccinating at least 70 million people in the country by December 01, 2021 and we are moving fast to achieving the target,” said Umar later in a press conference along with PM’s aide on Health Dr Faisal Sultan in Islamabad.
Dr Faisal said before vaccine availability main focus was on restrictions, while “now we are gradually shifting our strategic focus towards vaccination”.
He said children are super-spreaders of the virus that’s why it had been decided to open vaccination for children above 12 years of age.
Meanwhile, 52 more deaths were reported due to Covid-19 and at least 1,560 people contracted the virus in the country over the last 24 hours.
According to the NCOC statistics, 48,836 tests were conducted yesterday and the positivity ratio remained 3.9 per cent.
https://twitter.com/haqsmusings/status/1443664398694813714?s=20
Rank Country Doses * Rank Country Doses * Rank Country Doses *
1
China
2.18 billion 11
France
92.26 million 21
Philippines
41.41 million
2
India
804.78 million 12
Russia
87.74 million 22
Saudi Arabia
40.89 million
3
United States
385.59 million 13
Italy
82.41 million 23
Malaysia
40.38 million
4
Brazil
222.32 million
14
Pakistan
73.83 million
24
Colombia
38.33 million
5
Japan
149.88 million 15
Spain
69.09 million 25
Morocco
37.24 million
6
Indonesia
124.65 million 16
South Korea
55.51 million 26
Poland
36.96 million
7
Germany
105.67 million 17
Canada
55.06 million 27
Bangladesh
36.83 million
8
Turkey
105.11 million 18
Argentina
48.83 million 28
Vietnam
34.10 million
9
Mexico
95.27 million 19
Thailand
44.49 million 29
Chile
30.79 million
10
United Kingdom
93.00 million 20
Iran
42.00 million 30
Sri Lanka
24.80 million
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. government will ship 2.4 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Pakistan on Thursday, bringing the total number of doses sent to the South Asian country to about 18.3 million, more than any other country, a White House official said.
The latest shipments of the vaccine lots made by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, are due to arrive on Saturday via the COVAX distribution program, said the official, who asked to remain unidentified.
Pakistan has administered at least 93.6 million doses so far, according to data compiled by Reuters https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/pakistan. Assuming every person needs two doses, that would suffice to have vaccinated about 21.6% of the country’s population.
Previous U.S. shipments of Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines have gone to Pakistan every month since June.
The shipment is part of an ongoing U.S. vaccine diplomacy effort that has sent vaccines to dozens of countries.
The United States announced Friday an additional 9.6 million doses of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine are being shipped to Pakistan through the global vaccine-sharing COVAX initiative.
The shipment brings to more than 25 million the total number of COVID-19 vaccine doses donated by Washington to the Pakistani people, said the American Embassy in Islamabad.
“The United States is proud to partner with Pakistan to get effective, life-saving Pfizer vaccinations into the arms of Pakistanis, and Pakistan has done a great job of distributing our donated vaccines,” U.S. Chargé d’affaires Angela Aggeler was quoted as saying. “This donation comes just in time for young Pakistanis over age 12 to get their first jabs.”
COVID-19 infections are decreasing in Pakistan, with fewer than 1,000 new daily cases reported on average. The government last week eased restrictions on almost all public movement, education activities and businesses across the country of roughly 220 million people.
The latest government data show there have been 1,262,771 confirmed cases of infections, 39,953 of them active, and 28,228 COVID-19-related deaths since the pandemic hit Pakistan.
Officials reported Friday that more than 95 million doses have been administered to Pakistanis, including roughly 1 million in last 24 hours alone, since the national vaccination drive was rolled out in February.
The vaccination campaign has largely relied on Chinese vaccine, but the U.S. donations are helping officials overcome critical shortages of Western-developed anti-coronavirus shots.
“These Pfizer vaccines are part of the 500 million Pfizer doses the United States purchased this summer to deliver to 92 countries worldwide, including Pakistan, to fulfill President [Joe] Biden’s commitment to provide safe and effective vaccines around the world and supercharge the global fight against the pandemic,” the U.S. Embassy noted in its statement.
Washington has also delivered $63 million in COVID-19 assistance to Islamabad.
The COVAX program is co-led by Gavi (the Vaccine Alliance), the WHO (World Health Organization) and CEPI (the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness). The United States is the single largest contributor supporting the initiative toward global COVID-19 vaccine access.
At the national level under the prime minister’s leadership, the National Coordination Committee was established as an apex body which is tasked with supervising the national response towards the Covid-19 pandemic. In April 2020, the government in collaboration with partners launched a $595m Pakistan Preparedness and Response Plan (PPRP) that chalked out a coordinated international effort in consultation with the foreign affairs ministry to support the health ministry at the federal and provincial levels.
Pakistan’s vaccine roll-out has been remarkable.
The establishment of the National Command and Operation Centre was one of the stepping stones which made the Covid response pragmatic and swift. It led the coordination between various government agencies, provinces and regions. Based on epidemiological data, the model of testing, tracing and quarantine was implemented for identifying disease spread and hotspots so as to enable targeted smart lockdowns...
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Also, Pakistan’s economy performed beyond expectations amid the Covid-19 pandemic, resulting in a 3.94 per cent economic growth rate during the fiscal year, compared to a revised negative 0.47pc in 2019-20. The government, under the umbrella of the Ehsaas Emergency Cash programme, disbursed over Rs200 billion to nearly 1.7m families across Pakistan. This valuable assistance benefited nearly 109m people or half the country’s population.
The success of Pakistan’s Covid response management was also acknowledged by WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom, who noted that Pakistan effectively utilised the well-established community health workers’ infrastructure for surveillance, contact tracing and care. Dr Tedros appreciated Pakistan’s approach that the choice is not between controlling the virus or saving the economy; the two go hand in hand.
For a developing country, Pakistan’s vaccination roll-out programme has been remarkable. A recent significant milestone in this regard is the administration of 100m vaccine doses across the country. Moreover, special measures have been taken by deploying mobile vaccination teams which are reaching out to senior citizens, people living with disabilities and marginalised populations.
The silver lining during the pandemic has been the identification of the gaps in the existing health infrastructure, providing us with the opportunity to take corrective measures to strengthen health systems in the country. In 2016, WHO facilitated a joint external evaluation for Pakistan, which looked in detail at 19 technical areas, including pandemic preparation. As a result, comprehensive recommendations were made to improve the national health emergency infrastructure.
Notwithstanding the success of the Covid-19 response, there are a few areas where we can do better. The pandemic does not discriminate with regard to caste, creed and gender. However, data indicates that the vaccination rates amongst women are much lower in comparison to men. A similar predicament has been observed amongst the refugee population in Pakistan.
As the WHO representative in Pakistan, I state this with cautious optimism that Pakistan’s Covid-19 management is headed in the right direction with a particular emphasis on close coordination, strengthening surveillance systems, tracking the evolution of new variants and investing in research and innovation.
Pakistan’s government will step up COVID-19 vaccination efforts and is expanding the criteria for vaccine booster shots, amid fears of the Omicron variant, authorities say.
On Wednesday, the leadership of the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), which is heading the country’s COVID-19 response efforts, held a meeting in the capital Islamabad to review steps to curb the spread of the virus.
Authorities will set up 40 call centres to follow up with citizens who have missed their second dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, a statement issued after the meeting said.
Booster doses will also be administered to healthcare workers or citizens who are either over the age of 50 or are immunocompromised.
Pakistan has not yet detected Omicron, which was first designated a variant of concern by the World Health Organization on Friday.
On Wednesday, the South Asian country recorded 377 new cases of the coronavirus, with eight deaths recorded, taking the country’s total death toll since the pandemic began to 28,745.
Pakistan saw its fourth wave of the virus peak in August, and daily cases have been close to all-time lows in recent weeks.
The government’s vaccination efforts have seen more than 50.7 million Pakistanis, out of a population of 220 million, fully vaccinated, although a significant number of others have only received one dose, according to government data.
Last week, the NCOC banned inbound travel to Pakistan from seven countries or territories where Omicron had been detected, including Botswana, Eswatini, Hong Kong, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, and South Africa.
@shen_shiwei
·
5m
China state-affiliated media
So they've updated the joke?
https://twitter.com/shen_shiwei/status/1469165753031036931?s=20
(This tweet has maps of the best/worst prepared for pandemic....showing the West (US, Europe) best prepared, India & China less prepared and Pakistan least prepared)
Faisal Sultan
@fslsltn
Covid vaccine update. 75% of our eligible population (age 12 years and over) is now fully vaccinated.
https://twitter.com/fslsltn/status/1507634270252064775?s=20&t=Ft9jPCX7fwOmWTsOJSuh0A
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8136406/
Go to:
Government’s Initiatives to Tackle the Pandemic
The government of Pakistan has been lauded by international organizations including the WHO (and rightly so) for taking the necessary precautions and measures against the COVID-19 pandemic to guarantee not only the containment of disease spread but also to fulfill its responsibility as a state toward its people and their safety [14].
Immediate Response to Contain Disease Spread
One of the first steps taken by the government was to develop functional emergency operations centers and to detect the route of disease spread in Pakistan. The origin of the virus was the first question; hence, detailed history-taking of patients was crucial not only in understanding the outbreak but also in determining the contacts of patients with other people in the community [15]. This helped in cordoning off areas or home-bounding people who came in close contact with a patient with COVID-19. In addition to this, patients with a recent international travel history were monitored closely. This made sense because many cases and massive spread was reported in the countries neighboring Pakistan [15-17].
Containment Measures
Once primary and secondary contact-tracing was delineated, the foremost step taken by the government was to control the borders [18]. This was a crucial decision, owing to the consideration of a large number of Pakistani students and pilgrims studying in and travelling from China, Iran, and Europe. The government gained the confidence of the affected individuals and their families. It was almost unfeasible to restrict such individuals outside the country because of the strong public response; nonetheless, it was necessary if the spread of the virus was to be controlled quickly. To tackle this problem, the government took the initiative of designating quarantine houses near borders and airports to isolate people entering Pakistan for a short period to make sure they were not infected before they moved out in the community [19,20].
Border Control
The WHO reported that the number of new cases increased by the minute, and disease spread was now not only limited to people who had a recent travel history in the regions highly affected by the pandemic. Disease spread within the community was alarming and called for drastic steps to be taken not only by local governments but also by countries and states at large. All necessary services and measures are still being used in maximum capacity till date to ensure the safety of people’s lives in the country. Since all cases initially had a history of recent travel, it was speculated that transmissions were imported from outside of the country. Therefore, travel restrictions were imposed to limit the spread of virus from other countries to Pakistan [21].
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8136406/
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Testing and Contact Tracing
The country’s testing capacity was limited during the early months of the pandemic, and while high-income countries were conducting large-scale randomized tests to estimate the actual number of confirmed cases, Pakistan was forced to carry out priority-based testing and rely on the enforcement of strict quarantine and isolation strategies to contain the pandemic [31]. Contact-tracing, however, was an effective strategy that not only helped limit the spread of the virus but also helped predict its route through different regions of the country and across different age groups. Nevertheless, since large-scale testing was crucial to assess the severity of the pandemic, the testing capacity of laboratories and the availability of testing kits was gradually increased by the government, and in June 2020 up to 30,000 tests were conducted daily to ascertain the pace of spread and to formulate future strategies accordingly [32]. Both these strategies provided valuable insights on the differences in the clinical manifestation of COVID-19 in people with different demographic and health backgrounds.
Field Epidemiology Laboratory Training Program
The Training Programs in Epidemiology and Public Health Interventions Network is a network of 75 field epidemiology training programs, which operate in >100 countries including Pakistan. After the WHO declared COVID-19 a public health emergency of international concern, alumni from the Field Epidemiology Training Program implemented standard operating procedures (SOPs) for COVID-19 screening at international airports in Pakistan. They also designed and implemented a real-time data entry system to screen travelers from high-risk countries [33].
Implementation of SOPs: Masks, Sanitization, and Social Distancing
SOPs were devised for the public and were meant to be strictly followed in public areas. These included guidelines on social distancing; that is, avoiding crowded areas, maintaining a physical distance of 3 feet, wearing masks, maintaining hand hygiene, sanitizing frequently touched surfaces and areas, and following general hygiene rules such as avoiding touching the face, nose, or eyes, and coughing, or sneezing in the elbow or a paper napkin instead of the hands. The authorities started taking disciplinary action against those who violated the SOPs at public places in various parts of the country in accordance with the recommendations of the National Command and Control Centre of Pakistan. The focus of the National Command and Control Centre was on SOPs, compliance, strict administrative actions being implemented, and enforcement of various strands of the track, trace, and quarantine strategy [34].
Initiation of Awareness Campaigns: Role of Community Health workers
Many campaigns were initiated by both local and federal governments in the interest of the general population to spread awareness about the risks, signs, and symptoms of COVID-19 [35]. Pakistan’s extensive polio vaccination program, consisting of more than 265,000 community health workers and vaccinators, was mobilized with the help of the WHO [36]. This not only helped provide infrastructure to track and trace cases early during the epidemic but also helped spread awareness in the remote, underdeveloped rural regions of Pakistan. Another vital step was taken to spread awareness to the masses, where text messages were sent by the government of Pakistan on all mobile networks [37]. The daily reminders on following SOPs helped tackle those who did not take the necessary precautions and were unaware of the aforementioned information, and the imposition of fines and charges for noncompliance made risk and awareness campaigns a nationwide success [35,37].
BY MUNIR AHMED, ASSOCIATED PRESS - 01/19/23 4:04 AM ET
https://thehill.com/homenews/ap/ap-health/ap-study-non-infectious-diseases-cause-early-death-in-pakistan/
Pakistan has considerable control over infectious diseases but now struggles against cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and cancer as causes of early deaths, according to a new study published Thursday.
The Lancet Global Health, a prestigious British-based medical journal, reported that five non-communicable diseases — ischaemic heart disease, stroke, congenital defects, cirrhosis, and chronic kidney disease — were among the 10 leading causes of early deaths in the impoverished Islamic nation.
However, the journal said some of Pakistan’s work has resulted in an increase in life expectancy from 61.1 years to 65.9 over the past three decades. The change is due, it said, “to the reduction in communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases.” That’s still 7.6 years lower than the global average life expectancy, which increased over 30 years by 8% in women and 7% in men.
The study says “despite periods of political and economic turbulence since 1990, Pakistan has made positive strides in improving overall health outcomes at the population level and continues to seek innovative solutions to challenging health and health policy problems.”
The study, which was based on Pakistan’s health data from 1990 to 2019, has warned that non-communicable diseases will be the leading causes of death in Pakistan by 2040.
It said Pakistan will also continue to face infectious diseases.
“Pakistan urgently needs a single national nutrition policy, especially as climate change and the increased severity of drought, flood, and pestilence threatens food security,” said Dr. Zainab Samad, Professor and Chair of the Department of Medicine at Aga Khan University, one of the authors of the report.
“What these findings tell us is that Pakistan’s baseline before being hit by extreme flooding was already at some of the lowest levels around the globe,” said Dr. Ali Mokdad, Professor of Health Metrics Sciences at IHME. “Pakistan is in critical need of a more equitable investment in its health system and policy interventions to save lives and improve people’s health.”
The study said with a population approaching 225 million, “Pakistan is prone to the calamitous effects of climate change and natural disasters, including the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and catastrophic floods in 2010 and 2022, all of which have impacted major health policies and reform.”
It said the country’s major health challenges were compounded by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and last summer’s devastating flooding that killed 1,739 people and affected 33 million.
Researchers ask Pakistan to “address the burden of infectious disease and curb rising rates of non-communicable diseases.” Such priorities, they wrote, will help Pakistan move toward universal health coverage.”
The journal, considered one of the most prestigious scientific publications in the world, reported on Pakistan’s fragile healthcare system with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine. The study was a collaboration with a Karachi-based prestigious Aga Khan University and Pakistan’s health ministry.
The study also mentioned increasing pollution as one of the leading contributors to the overall disease burden in recent years. Pakistan’s cultural capital of Lahore was in the grip of smog on Thursday, causing respiratory diseases and infection in the eyes. Usually in winter, a thick cloud of smog envelops Lahore, which in 2021 earned it the title of the world’s most polluted city.