All must worry about Covid-19 second wave: Sindh CM

All citizens must be worried about the developing situation in terms of the second wave and strict adherence to the standard operating procedures and social distancing protocols must still be maintained at all spaces, said Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah on Thursday.

He said this during a session titled 'Leadership under Crisis: Pandemic and Civic Issues' at the Institute of Business Administration (IBA).

At the session, IBA executive director Dr S Akbar Zaidi began the discussion by enquiring the CM on the readiness of the Sindh government in the face of the pandemic.

While the response to the pandemic was swift, the CM replied, it was essential that all health facilities in the province were analysed first to gauge if the pandemic could be controlled. After a thorough examination of all hospitals across the province, private-sector doctors were mobilised and hospitals were equipped as quickly as possible, he added.

When quizzed on the lockdown, the CM defended his actions by reiterating that a number of crises involving mass gatherings of people prompted the government to expedite the treatment process.

Every single attendee of these gatherings was tracked down and isolated for more than a month, he claimed, explaining that as a consequence of these mass gatherings, Sindh increased its testing from 100 tests per day to almost 7,000 tests per day in most health facilities.

As a result of these tests, Sindh has now tested almost twice the number of people per day as compared to the rest of the country, he said.

Reflecting on how this pandemic helped to deal with other civic issues, the CM remarked, "The Covid-19 situation allowed us to deal with multiple challenges at once. The biggest challenge for us, however, was how to use this experience and adapt to upcoming challenges.

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