Pakistan’s dangerous third wave
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In Pakistan, the figures trickle in every morning. The system for collecting the number of dead, new patients, ventilator availability, bed occupation and much else, is an impressive system.
The National Command and Operation Center(NCOC) was rapidly put together to handle COVID-19 logistics in May last year. Its numbers are the gospel for planners, doctors, citizens-- the entire country waits every morning for the previous day’s morbid scorecard... with bated breath indeed.
It is the season of death. Doctors are dying almost daily and in this third wave the numbers are worse than before. Positivity rates are in the double digits. The human race has arrived, ironically in dark harmony and in an egalitarian and democratic way, in a place unknown, in spaces unchartered before.
For Pakistan the questions are numerous. Will the oxygen supplies meet the demand of increasing COVID-19 patients? Will the Brazilian and South African variants spread here too? Will the vaccines protect Pakistanis against these new variants? Will the deadly Indian variant cross over from the border? Will our oxygen supplies meet the growing demand of oxygen?
Pakistan’s logistics management via the NCOC is in place. It is an effective coordinating platform where Pakistan’s seven federating units including the federal government engage on key matters ranging from medical facilities to smart and total lockdowns, the closure of schools, attendance levels in offices, the procurement of ventilators, the choosing of vaccines, the movement of people, travel schedules flight closures and so on.
I saw dozens of youngsters eating and chatting away mostly outdoors, but with virtually no distance between them. When it came to taking examinations, these young people launched, and rightly so, campaigns on social media urging the government to cancel all exams for fear of COVID-19, especially seeing the test centers were indoors.
Nasim Zehra
The NCOC has worked on predicating the government’s logistical moves related to the provision of medical emergency services, city and interprovincial transportation and on positivity figures. Hence, while forcing future trends, Pakistan has managed to handle the demands on its health services relatively better than other countries in the region and beyond. With mayhem in India triggering endless deaths, mostly caused by the shortfall of oxygen, Pakistan has been able to prepare itself for such an eventuality so far by stepping up the production of oxygen and importing it as needed.
The question of vaccines has been a tricky one. The government has faced huge criticism for not procuring, and in fact not placing orders for the covered vaccines early enough despite having announced a $150 million fund for them. Pakistan currently, with only 1 percent population coverage, is now acquiring vaccines from multiple sources with China as its main provider.
For herd immunity, Pakistan needs at least 50 percent vaccine coverage, and if all things remain the same, senior officials believe that by June 2021 Pakistan could return to a degree of normalcy.
Pakistan’s social protection policy initiated in May 2020 will be expanded through 2021 to help millions of daily wage earners. Similarly, by giving subsidized loans and deferred payments for electricity’s electricity and rents to small and medium entrepreneurs, Pakistan was able to keep money in circulation and by extension, demand for basic goods. While this helps to keep the wheel of the economy spinning, preventing a standstill and stagnation of the economy, it has not been able to prevent highly inflationary tendencies and to some degree, unemployment and some contraction of the economy.
COVID-19 has meant that the government essentially intervenes to calibrate each aspect of a citizen’s life. From home to work to public spaces, the task is difficult. In recent days, army patrolling has begun to enforce SOP’s for people in public spaces. Even then, the resistance to wearing masks somewhat remains.
Pakistan is neighbor to India, a country so incredibly and ominously conquered by the diabolical spell of the pandemic. In Pakistan, virtually no one has missed the heart wrenching and terrifying stories of mounting deaths, the declining oxygen rates across that country, the mounting number of deaths, the battle over scarcity of cremation sites. And yet, there isn’t much learning. There is not enough fear to make people follow basic SOP’s that the government has repeatedly been begging its people to follow.
Paradoxically, the complacency remains intact. There isn’t a lane in my neighborhood where the disease hasn’t left people ill or dead. Yet in the same neighborhood, crowds still gather in markets around Iftar time with many unmasked. As they sit down to chat and eat together, social distancing is almost non-existent.
Recently I went to a neighborhood market in a posh area and it could have easily been a routine Saturday night. I saw dozens of youngsters eating and chatting away mostly outdoors, but with virtually no distance between them. When it came to taking examinations, these young people launched, and rightly so, campaigns on social media urging the government to cancel all exams for fear of COVID-19, especially seeing the test centers were indoors.
The government, like all governments, is left facing the many paradoxes of the challenge. The public fears death, it blames the government for not doing enough to protect them against the disease and yet they don’t abide by the SOP’s. They fear India’s horrifying situation, yet they crowd bazaars.
Government officials face media ire when found violating the SOP’s but the public's violations are apparently kosher.
As Pakistan enters a semi-lockdown during Eid break, the government is hoping luck works in Pakistan’s favor…like it did in the first two waves.
- Nasim Zehra is an author, analyst and national security expert.
Twitter: @NasimZehra
