Pakistans-lockdown-strategy-is-clear-to-confront-COVID-19-Fawad-Ch

Minister of Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhary says Prime Minister Imran Khan’s lockdown strategy was clear as he did not want to force people to starve while fighting coronavirus.

Minister of Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhary said comparing the strategies of the world against the deadly virus, Pakistan had adopted a better one lockdown strategy to confront COVID-19.

The situation in Pakistan regarding coronavirus was not as bad as was being analyzed and estimated, he added.

The minister said Pakistan was not only facing coronavirus pandemic but also the country’s economy, so Pakistan could not afford complete lockdown.

He said the opposition instead of blaming the government’s policies, should join hands with it in the fight against COVID-19.

Now weeks into the lockdown we are seeing some positive results as Pakistan hasn’t climbed a steep curve either on infections or deaths. It seems, however, that the slow growth in confirmed cases is due both to the lockdown and also limited testing.

For low coronavirus deaths too, scanty testing is partially responsible as patients who weren’t tested when alive aren’t reported as coronavirus fatalities. However, things are likely to get worse as infections continue to creep up.

Since there is no cure or vaccine, one strategy is to let the virus spread and achieve ‘herd immunity’, the notion that when enough people within a population get infected and gain immunity then further spread of the virus becomes slow.

Great Britain pursued herd immunity for a time before changing course once it was understood that it may suffer up to a million deaths before herd immunity is achieved.

A lockdown has four principal advantages. First is to slow the spread of the virus, what is referred to as ‘flattening the curve’ of infection, so that a large proportion of the population doesn’t get sick at the same time and public healthcare systems are not inundated with millions of people getting sick simultaneously and competing for limited medical resources including hospital beds, ventilators, etc.

Slowing the spread of the virus has an enormous impact on the number of infections and fatalities.

The New York Times estimated that in America a no lockdown situation would have led to more than 150 million infections and 1.8 million deaths but a 60-day lockdown would lead to 13.9 million infections and 82,300 deaths. So ‘flattening the curve’ is crucial to saving lives.