ISLAMABAD: Pakistani health chief Dr. Faisal Sultan said on Saturday evening there was a fifty percent chance the government would impose complete lockdowns in major Pakistani cities due to rising coronavirus cases, adding that opting for wider restrictions would only be beneficial if they were imposed before the Eid Al-Fitr holiday.

Pakistan is currently battling a third wave of the coronavirus, recording 5,611 new infections in the last 24 hours, and 118 deaths. 

Speaking in an interview to a local news channel, when asked if Pakistan was headed toward a “complete lockdown” in major cities, Sultan said the government would assess over the next “two to four days” if strictness in imposing existing restrictions bore fruit. 

“If we can see a clear direction then it’s okay, but if that doesn’t happen, then in parallel we are preparing that the cities in which percentage positivity is high, there we will have to impose further restrictions or what we call lockdown ... And we are preparing for it.”

When asked how close the government was to imposing complete lockdowns in major cities, the health adviser said: 

““If we look at the existing situation then there is absolutely a 50% chance ... This is an estimation but I believe that there is at least a 50% chance that if things are not clear in the next few days, we will have to maybe go toward lockdown.”

In Pakistan, millions of people working in bigger cities travel home to their villages and smaller towns for the religious Eid Al-Fitr celebration, which is expected in mid-May this year at the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

When asked if the government would try to restrict that “mass migratory movement” before Eid, Sultan said: 

“Yes absolutely … if you want to get the most benefit from it [complete lockdown], it has to be at a time when movement is the most or there is a chance of movement. So it has to be, naturally, if you have to put restrictions of this nature [complete lockdown], then it has to be before Eid to have benefits; after [Eid] won’t have any benefit.”

Speaking about what wider lockdowns would entail, Sultan said “essential services will obviously continue but all the things that are non-essential, we will reluctantly, god forbid, have to go toward [closing them].”

He said the wider lockdowns would have to last a minimum of ten days “but I think you need at least two weeks to break the spread of the disease.”