C. MEASURES TAKEN BY GOVERNMENT OF PAKISTAN TO COMBAT COVID-19:
COVID-19 pandemic has been a great challenge even for leading countries
of the world like China, USA and Italy. For a developing country like
Pakistan, that lacks a developed health care infrastructure as well as
resources, along a current economic crisis, spread of COVID-19 is a
threat beyond its means. Pakistan started to take preventive measures a
month ago its first COVID-19 reported case. On March 14’2020. WHO
representative visited Pakistan to evaluate the measures taken by the
government of Pakistan. The steps to prevention of the federal and
provincial governments were discussed, diagnostic lab, isolation
facilities and health facilities were inspected. He declared the
diagnostic labs and treatments facilities as “world class” but
highlighted the need of increase in the testing facilities in public
sector, if the cases increase.
With strict screening measures at the point of entry, 2,000 isolation
beds, a mobile diagnostic facility dispatched at Taftan border to screen
the pilgrims entering the country from Iran (an area of COVID-19
outbreak), seven diagnostic capable of diagnosing 15,000 patients, the
response of Pakistan was declared “one the best national response
programs among the world”(Qureshi, 2020). The preventive measures taken
by the Government of Pakistan against COVID-19 are listed in a time line
in the Table 4 below.
Table 4: Preventive measures taken by the Government of Pakistan against
COVID-19