Govt to decide ease in lockdown after taking all provinces on board: Asad Umar

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar has said that a decision regarding a relaxation in the lockdown will be taken after taking all the provinces on board after 9 May. 

Addressing the media at the National Command and Operation Centre in Islamabad, Asad Umar said the government will decide its post-May 9 strategies after a meeting of the National Coordination Committee.

The federal minister said that the government could not open everything and ease the lockdown completely to prevent the health system from being overburdened. 

He said lockdown restrictions across the country will be eased gradually in order to give livelihood to the people.

Asad Umar further said that there were almost 5,000 beds in ICUs across the country, of which 1,500 were dedicated for COVID-19 patients.

He said that the country also has 5,000 ventilators and the National Disaster Management Authority was trying to import even more, adding that at present, there are 35 COVID-19 patients on ventilators.

The minister informed that the country now had the capacity to develop medical gear and soon the domestic production of ventilators would start.

He added that the government also required increasing the testing capacity. “We have 55 laboratories that can conduct COVID-19 tests. If they work in single shifts, we can conduct some 14,700 tests every day which is close to our target of 20,000. If we do double shifts, we can also double the number the tests that can be conducted daily.”

He said that at the start of the epidemic, the country was registering a death or two daily while now that had significantly gone up. “There has been an average of 24 deaths in the country over the last six days,” he noted.

The minister once again reiterated that the pandemic situation was not as fatal as it was in Europe and the United States.

“The fatality rate in Pakistan is far less compared to the United States, the UK and Spain,” he said, stressing that the people needed to adopt protective steps in order to stop the spread of the COVID-19.

He added that the economic impact of the lockdown was far more serious on Pakistan’s economy than the western countries.

He said even countries in Europe where thousands of deaths occurred such as Spain, Italy and France have started easing lockdowns to keep the “wheel of the economy turning”.

“What is important is that we do not burden our healthcare system while also preventing hunger and poverty,” Umar concluded.