There is a Covid crisis, but no panic: Fawad

Federal Information and Broadcasting Minister Fawad Chaudhry has said that as far as the Covid-19 situation is concerned, "there is a crisis, but no panic."

He said this during a webinar titled 'Pakistan at the Crossroads', organised by CPG Dialogue.

He said, "When the first wave struck, we were totally unprepared and were not making any of the required apparatus locally, but over the past two years, we have learned a lot and prepared ourselves, so we are tackling the situation [in a better manner]."

Commenting on vaccination in the country, he said so far 1.7 million people had been vaccinated in Pakistan.

"Our first target is to vaccinate 26 million people and later scale the number up to 100 million in the second phase."

On the shortage of vaccine doses, he said the government was making every effort to acquire the jabs, but at the moment, only two countries - China and Russia - were exporting vaccine as India had stopped the export due to its current situation.

Chaudhry also said he was determined to revamp the Ministry of Information and its operations by bringing about structural changes.

Sharing his views about The Associated Press of Pakistan (APP), he said the APP needed to be digitalised to be at par with news agencies like Reuters, AFP and others.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 27^th, 2021.