Coronavirus: what’s our plan?

The visuals out of China in the last week are indeed apocalyptic — the information equally so. And the situation so far only worsens.

According to Pakistan’s health ministry, all the travellers into the country from China, who have been tested for the novel coronavirus, have been found uninfected, which we may take with a skeptical pinch of salt. Special Assistant to the PM on National Health Services Zafar Mirza has previously served as director Health Systems at the World Health Organization (WHO) and appears to be an able appointee. However, given the lack of transparent information historically supplied by Pakistan’s governments to its citizens, it is our right to know the whole truth and demand that concrete measures are taken, regardless of concerns for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The sight of Pakistani doctors — wearing just basic masks and having no gloves or goggles on, and taking temperatures of disembarking passengers from China lining up at our airports — is not reassuring enough. Chinese officials have stated that there is up to a 14-day incubation period before symptoms appear and that the recent death of the first Chinese doctor in the epicentre city of Wuhan was due to contracting the virus through his eyes. Hence, the preventative measures being adopted at Pakistani airports are far from adequate.

According to a Hong Kong-based doctor, who previously handled SARS patients, this latest coronavirus appears to be 10 times more virulent than the SARS virus. It can attach anywhere and attack the body’s organs and immune system.

A Chinese citizen living in Shanghai has revealed how dire the situation there and in Beijing, China’s largest cities, has become. The infected people are there in every province, she claims while adding that the citizens feel like sitting ducks in their homes. People pour in to the larger cities thinking they would be safer at the larger hospitals, while the government is now trying to curtail their transport. Many of these are thought to be carriers of the fatal virus — though not exhibiting the signs yet — the situation is apprehended to worsen over the next two weeks. People exhibiting symptoms of the flu are going to the hospital in a panic and inadvertently picking up the virus there.

Tragically the 11 million people of Wuhan have basically been left to their own fate, apart from the heroic hospital staff and military medics.

Netizens are aware of all this. We have been made well aware that we don’t even have the novel coronavirus tests available here. We also know that after the Chinese New Year holidays, Chinese living and working in Pakistan will return imminently. So far there is no information shared by the health ministry in Pakistan on what protocol will be followed to prevent a catastrophe that may have been waiting to happen. We lack resources like in China; have a massive, illiterate population with daily wage earners who can’t survive in a long drawn-out lockdown; and suffer from a poor level of general hygiene. If this novel coronavirus is not stopped at our borders, we too will become sitting ducks.

So Mr Zafar Mirza we need to know, what is your plan?

Published in The Express Tribune, January 29^th, 2020.

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