On Tuesday, Federal Minister for planning Asad Umar credited the people of Pakistan for the decline of Covid-19 but warned the nation against lowering the guard.
According to Asad Umar, cases declined and the spread of virus stopped to a larger extent because of the cooperation of people of the country. He said that Pakistanis are the real heroes as their cooperation played the biggest role in defeating the drastic pandemic.
“Whatever the steps were taken by the state and the government could not have been effective if the public had not cooperated with us. A large part of the society helped the government. I would like to thank the media as well for sending our message to the public on what to do [to ward off the coronavirus],” he added.
He warned of the threat coronavirus still poses as people have started taking it lightly. “Ever since this announcement [lifting lockdown restrictions] was made, I have been hearing from people that coronavirus has been ended. I wish coronavirus would have been eliminated. However, unfortunately, the situation is not like that at the moment. We can’t say at this moment that coronavirus has been eliminated,” warns Asad Umar while acknowledging the decline in Covid-19 cases.
Read more: WHO Director General Praises Pakistan’s Efforts against Coronavirus
He further said that the government applied the right strategies and people took the right decisions and followed standard operating procedures and tackled the coronavirus efficiently. He also praised the lockdown strategies and said that lockdown cannot be imposed for long as the economy can be in danger.
He said that due to contact tracing strategy, they were able to able to reach people who were at risk of catching the infection. “Through this contract tracing system, we were able to trace 1.1mn contacts out of which 1mn tests were conducted and 10.5% was the positivity ratio of those who were tested,” Umar explained.
He also told that the government imposed 2,350 smart lockdowns across the country and smart lockdown strategy succeeded due to people’s cooperation.
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