Coronavirus is rapidly increasing in Pakistan and the more it reaches every part of the country the more people fear testing and screening when the symptoms appear.
Confirmed cases have reached 76,400 and the death toll is standing at 1,621, total recovered Covid-19 patients are 27,110. The number of cases has seen a spike from the last week and daily record breaking confirmed cases and daily deaths are reported.
As the disease is highly contagious so all infected patients are kept in isolation to contain the spread of the virus. People with no symptoms are told to maintain social distancing to keep everyone safe. This process requires people to cut off from family and friends and even everyone around. Such strict isolation is not followed in Pakistan and consequently, the spread is exponential and the highest in South Asia.
Due to the rapid spread, another prevailing problem is the fear of getting tested positive for coronavirus. One reason is that people now believe that when a patient develops some symptoms of flu and they visit the nearby hospital, they are admitted into coronavirus wards. This rumor has another bigger impact on people’s minds that they have started avoiding getting tested for coronavirus.
Such reasons appear to be general fears that if the test turns out to be positive, the infected individual will be exorcized from the whole community and will be left to deteriorate in an isolation ward. People fear that calling a Covid-19 testing team to one’s home or neighborhood will invite judgment.
Then there is another spreading misinformation that dead bodies of those who once got infected are not released to their families rather their bodies are experimented upon and then they are buried by the authorities.
These types of fears and hesitations are proving damaging for the efforts to stop the spread of COVID-19.
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