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