ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s health chief Dr. Faisal Sultan announced on Thursday the Center for Disease Control (CDC) at the National Institute of Health (NIH) would take over the coordination work and other responsibilities from the country’s central pandemic response body that ended its operations today amid declining COVID-19 cases.

Pakistan decided to set up the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) in March 2020 to synergize and articulate unified national efforts against the coronavirus pandemic by collecting, analyzing and processing information from all provinces.

The NCOC provided policy input to the government to ensure timely measures to prevent the virus spread in the country.

It was announced earlier this month, however, that the pandemic response body would soon be shut down due to a drop in the coronavirus cases and positivity ratio in Pakistan.

“The disease control and coordination roles of the NCOC will be taken up by the CDC staff,” Sultan told Arab News while specifying that the CDC was among six institutes established during the NIH restructuring.

“There has been a transition period that lasted several weeks in which the staff from CDC worked alongside the NCOC team,” he continued.

Earlier in the day, Prime Minister Imran Khan applauded the NCOC for playing a major role that helped prevent the spread of COVID-19 in Pakistan.

“Today, as NCOC closes down, I want to congratulate the NCOC team & [its leadership] for a professional, nationally-coordinated response to the pandemic,” he wrote in a Twitter post. “As a result, our Covid response was recognised by [international agencies] & people in the field as one of the most successful globally.”

Speaking to Arab News, a health ministry spokesperson, Sajid Hussain Shah, said the NCOC setup would soon be moved to the NIH building.

“The NIH staff was already doing that work at the NCOC, and we can now carry it forward independently,” he said.

Public health experts praised the efficient functioning of the NCOC, saying they hoped the NIH would perform the same responsibilities by displaying the similar level of commitment.

“The NCOC is the single most important factor which has played a very effective role in generating a very effective national response against COVID-19,” Dr. Zafar Mirza, who was chief of Pakistan’s health ministry when the pandemic response body was set up two years ago, told Arab News.

“This actually has provided us an opportunity to develop in real time a very quick response with the cooperation of the civil and military sectors,” he said, adding it was one of the great success stories not just in Pakistan but also the rest of the developing world.

“Now, the CDC will continue the work but this handing over could have been delayed a little bit till the further elimination of the pandemic,” Mirza continued. “Nevertheless, ultimately this transformation had to take place.”

Dr Bushra Jamil, a professor of medicine and infectious diseases at Aga Khan University Hospital, said the NCOC played a commendable role which she hoped would now be carried forward by the NIH.

“The NCOC did an exemplary work and we hope the NIH will do the same since it was an integral part of the NCOC from the start,” she told Arab News while acknowledging the NIH had the capacity to undertake the same responsibilities.

“It was a planned move and had to take place in November 2021,” she informed, “though it was delayed due to the emergence of the omicron variant.”