COVID-19 record in pakistan by jhu.edu

 How early is Pakistan’s response to the present CORONAVIRUS outbreak?

 Coronavirus cases in Pakistan have been raised to 236 up to now and the rate is getting higher as per reports by the ministry of health and WHO. The virus originally originated in WUHAN China and has cost them more than 3000 lives. The disease is spreading now in European countries and has destroyed their economy in a few days. Well, when did the first case of the pandemic arrived in Pakistan compared to the first case in china from the outbreak started? This is a serious question that we should look into it.

 China believes that its first corona case was in November 2019. The virus emerged as an epidemic in January and around February start, the virus spread to Iran and other countries and adopted a pandemic state. Now, coming towards Pakistan, the first case has been reported on 26 Feb, and now on March 17, the cases are 236 and still the list is getting substantial. The question is, why we, being a closed neighbor of China and being well aware of China's situation and in spite of knowing our weak Health Support System, not adopted a policy to take early measures?  This clarifies the research & development image of our health ministry and concerned departments.

 Sadly speaking, we have no policy to handle emergency health issues because of our termite-eaten system. Even now, no task force has been allotted the orders of developing a proper public to Government channel to educate and warn the citizens earlier before they got infected and I think this should be done even earlier in January or the start of February. But unfortunately, the health teams in Pakistan are just waiting for news of new cases and then isolating them. Although they are still doing a great job as the virus has not yet spread widely in the country, but the measures are still well behind the par, because of our late response to corona outbreak and mainly because of our backwardness in medical industries. We are short of isolation wards, even ventilators, and beds for isolated patients. Yet things are going well, because of a low number of infected ones, but consider this late response could be a disaster to our people and mainly to our economy which was just starting to stand up.

 The time has not flown, and we still can make plans but they need to be implemented. A strong plan reflecting National Action Plan should be developed for all emergency health issues in Pakistan, including the existing pandemic within the complete surveillance of health researchers to strengthen our R&D sector on health problems and thus to be ready for any epidemic or pandemic in future as well. This type of serious issue needs a serious team with a great team leader, and we are lacking that kind of system to interact with our people in such scenarios and educate them. Sadly, the Govt has no control over people and this is a point to ponder. Digital policies in such an emergency also play crucial roles to educate people and keep them away from fake news, to motivate them to fight the situation. Unfortunately, we are also lacking that.

 InshaAllah, soon the present health emergency situation will go away, but we need to stand up as a nation and fight the outbreak like china did. We need to learn from them, not just for the present scenario but for the overall health issues that we are facing in our system.