Lockdown finally

Coronavirus has finally forced the whole of Pakistan into a lockdown. The emergency step — taken for about two weeks, to start with — has unfortunately exposed an appalling lack of unity within our civilian leadership even in the times of an unprecedented crisis. Only hours after Prime Minister Imran Khan, in an address to the nation on Sunday, ruled out closing down cities and towns in view of the country’s poor economy and advocated self-quarantine as the “best precautionary measure”, Sindh Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah announced locking down the entire province and sought help from the armed forces to ensure people stay at home. A day later, on Tuesday, the other three provinces — interestingly all led by the PTI — as well as Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan followed suit. And in a quick response, the armed forces expressed their readiness to come out in support of the civilian rulers — just as they have done in case of the various calamities to have hit the country, like floods and earthquakes.

Now with the lockdown debate put to rest and the nation having moved into a social distancing mode, the most important question is: what next? Notwithstanding the need for an economic relief package to offset the impact of an all-closed in the country, the rulers are required to focus on what all is required to fight the novel virus on the medical front. Since we are in for a spike in the number of infections, we need to dedicate spaces to operate as quarantine zones and isolation centres all across the country. “Test, test, test” is the “key message” by WHO Director General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. And there can be no tests without the diagnostic kits. So there is this most urgent need to invest in these kits and arrange them in an extremely big number. Equally important is to equip our courageous medical practitioners with protective gears.

However, without the cooperation of the people, the lockdown will not be to serve the purpose of social distancing which is so far the only way to prevent this deadly virus from spreading, given that an anti-virus, being worked on by the scientists in many countries of the world, is a long way to come about. 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 25^th, 2020.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.