No room to relax

While we seem to have dodged the first bullet despite all odds, the substantial decline in the coronavirus cases in the country has left many confounded as to the reasons behind such a remarkable flattening of the Covid curve. Hosting up to 212 million people, Pakistan maintains a dense urban populace, while cities are rife with “crowded, multi-generational homes or packed apartment buildings that favour rampant virus transmission”.

Even a smart lockdown is rendered impotent when it comes to dealing with the massive and ever so stubborn population of Karachi and Lahore — 15 million and 11 million respectively. This sudden sharp decrease has, therefore, bewildered doctors and health experts alike who say that “no one has been able to explain this decline”. The lack of a concrete explanation has left many to propose their own hypotheses, with some accrediting the hot and humid weather conditions that shorten the lifespan of the virus while others are citing the low median age of 22 years in the country as a significant factor. However, all such predictions are shattered when we look at the deplorable Covid situation in India — a next door neighbour with similar conditions that is registering a record 80,000 new cases and around 1,000 fatalities every day.

Instead of using isolated factors as predictions, one instead needs to analyse the overall scenario. At the start of the spread, citizens were taken over by a general sense of paranoia and would, at a single sneeze, run to the hospital to get themselves tested which exponentially increased the rate of infections. Then when resources started to rapidly exhaust and hospitals started to fill up, health authorities decided to only admit and test critical patients, while others were told to isolate themselves at home. As the paranoia amongst citizens started to subside, people became more reluctant to get themselves tested. Thus, a record decrease in new infections was reported.

This however, does not give the citizens and the authorities the room to relax. While people remain eager to take off their masks, a second wave is pretty imminent, as also warned by Federal Minister Asad Umar, who is also the chair of the centre that supervises the Covid situation in the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 6^th, 2020.

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