Mon 04 May 2020:
Around 18 million Pakistanis could lose their jobs in the country due to ongoing lockdown enforced to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, a top minister said on Sunday, as the COVID-19 tally crossed 20,000 after 981 more patients were diagnosed during the day.
“According to calculations of the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), around 20 million to 70 million population of the country could fall below the poverty line in the current perspective,” Planning Minister Asad Umar said in a televised press briefing.
Umar, who also chairs National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) on coronavirus, said that around 18 million people could lose their jobs due to ongoing lockdown.
He said that the current lockdown was announced to last until May 9 and Prime Minister Imran Khan will be briefed on the situation in the next few days.
“We will then decide post-May 9 strategy after a meeting of the National Coordination Committee (NCC),” he said.
Umar also said that the coronavirus was not as fatal in Pakistan as in some other countries of the world, in an apparent reference to Europe where tens of thousands of people have died due to the virus.
“We have significantly enhanced the capacity of our healthcare system. We currently have 1,400 ventilators for coronavirus patients and 900 more will be added in two months,” he said, adding that only 35 coronavirus patients were on ventilators.
He said the country has now the capacity to develop medical equipment and soon the domestic production of ventilators will start. He said there were 55 labs for testing and “we have the capacity to carry out over 14,000 tests on daily basis”.
Umar said the testing, tracking and quarantine system had been made functional and it was implemented in two sectors of Islamabad.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of National Health Services said that out of 20,078 coronavirus cases, Punjab reported 7,494 cases, Sindh 7,465, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 3,129, Balochistan 1,172, Islamabad 393, Gilgit-Baltistan 364 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 67 cases.
It said that 17 more patients also died on Sunday, taking the total death toll to 457. Another 5,114 people have recovered so far. The authorities so far had conducted 203,025 tests, including 8,716 in the last 24 hours.
The trend showed that the number of patients was steadily going up.
Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday night said he was not sure when the vaccine against COVID-19 will be available and expressed fears that “we may have to live with the coronavirus for six months or (even) a year”.
Khan said the war against the pandemic can be won by wisdom and not by using force to shut down the masses.
The Pakistan International Airlines announced its first flight to bring back stranded nationals from the US, when PK 8722 would depart from Washington for Islamabad on May 13.
Think your friends would be interested? Share this story!
