WHO recommends 'intermittent, targeted' lockdowns in Pakistan

UN health agency says Pakistan does not meet any conditions for easing lockdown

ISLAMABAD: The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recommended to the Punjab government to implement a 2-week strict lockdown, intermittently, to stem the exponential spike in novel coronavirus cases in the province.

In a letter to the Punjab health minister, the UN health agency said that the virus had spread all over the country, and a large number of cases had been recorded in big cities. The cases had increased sharply after the easing of lockdown. It ranks Pakistan was among top-10 most affected countries.

The letter appreciated the Pakistan’s efforts in fighting Covid-19, but warned that recent statistics suggest its current strategy was not paying off. It recommended the government adopt a 2-week-on, 2-week-off lockdown, as it offerred the most chance of continuing economic activities while ensuring public health.

“After partial relaxation of the [lockdown] measures on May 1, 2020, then followed by complete relaxation on May 22, 2020, the rate of spread of COVID-19 increased,” it said, noting that new infections had climbed from around 1,000 per day during the lockdown to over 4,000 per day right now.

The WHO had earlier recommended that any government seeking to ease movement restrictions needed to fulfill the six conditions: no unchecked disease transmission; a health system that can detect, test, isolate and treat every case and trace every contact; minimised hot-spot risks in vulnerable places, such as nursing homes; implementation of preventative measures in schools, workplaces and other essential places; a “managed” approach to the risk of importing new cases and public awareness among communities to live under a “new normal” of coronavirus.

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In its letter, WHO noted that Pakistan was not meeting “any of the prerequisite conditions for opening the lockdown.” It said that Pakistan continued to exhibit a high positivity rate of 24% -- above the required level of 5% -- while the surveillance system to trace contacts was “weak.”

It also noted that the public was unwilling to adapt to change its behavior and adopt SOPs. “Pakistan has been ranked among the top 10 countries around the globe in reporting the highest number of new cases,” it warned, adding that the country needed to take strategic decisions to either tighten or implement public health measures that ensure economic prosperity, human rights, and food security.

Urging the government to expand its testing capacity to around 50,000 tests per day, the letter said that with its high positivity rate, Pakistan was potentially missing out on thousands of cases. Cases increasing beyond 100,000 in Pakistan was a cause for concern, WHO added.