Pakistani doctors on alert over new COVID-19 variant 

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) rang alarm bells on Sunday and urged the government and public to exercise special caution amid global concerns over the emergence of a new strain of COVID-19.
The new variant of the coronavirus was reported to the WHO from South Africa earlier this week as a highly mutated strain and has already been detected in Botswana, Belgium, Hong Kong and Israel. The WHO on Friday codenamed the new strain as “omicron” and declared it a “variant of concern.”
The National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), Pakistan’s central pandemic response body, already on Saturday imposed a complete ban on travel from Hong Kong and six southern African countries — South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini and Botswana. It also ordered the aviation division to design a mechanism for the screening of passengers traveling from these states through indirect flights.
“Government should take all the required preventive measures,” the PMA said in a statement. “We can face another wave of Covid-19 most likely by the mid or end of the December. It could be serious because this new variant is more contagious.”
The PMA also called on unvaccinated members of the public to get their jabs.
“We also request you to adopt preventive measures,” it said. “The people who do not get them vaccinated could face the intricacy of the disease.”
Pakistan has administered at least 121.7 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines so far. Assuming every person needs two doses, that is enough to have vaccinated about 28.1 percent of the country’s population.