Prime Minister Imran Khan on Monday announced a temporary ban on political rallies and big gatherings to prevent the surging second wave of the coronavirus but emphasised that businesses would not be closed.
In a meeting of NCOC, Prime Minister Imran Khan urged people to follow coronavirus-related standard operating procedures (SOPs), warning that authorities have observed that infections in Pakistan have increased four times during the last ten days.
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The Prime minister said that if we give up to take care, it is fear that hospitals will again be occupied with the patients. Keeping in view of the present situation, the decision about the schools will be taken in a week and in case of increasing cases of the virus in schools, the winter vacations may prolong and the summer vacations may squeeze.
He added that this is the time to go by SOPs as the Covid-19 cases are increasing. The government is not going to close the restaurant but there must be proper distancing in the restaurants.
He said that we have decided not to do the political gatherings and we expect others to do the same. There could be no more than 300 people in any kind of gathering, marriages are allowed to be arranged in open places, keeping in view all the SOPs to be acted upon. SOPs should be followed in Mosques as were followed in the month of Ramadan.
The premier said that the tiger force is assigned the task to look at how the SOPs are being followed and who are those, not going by these SOPs. In Pakistan, there are 29055 active cases of Corona, out of which 1447 patients are in critical condition. 7193 people have died of Corona so far in the country.
Despite the presence of the second wave, people are still not feeling the severity of the situation. The majority of Pakistanis are found without the masks and are hesitant of going by the other SOPs like using sanitizers and keeping distances etc.