ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Thursday that the ongoing month was crucial to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus in the country, warning people to take precautionary measures since negligence would make matters worse.

“If we can get past this month without numbers escalating, the worst may be over,” the prime minister said while addressing the National Assembly of Pakistan in Islamabad.

Khan’s policy statement on the issue comes when the national coronavirus tally has surpassed 190,000 with 3,903 fatalities since outbreak of the disease in the country in late February. The government had imposed a month-long lockdown of cities to prevent the surge of viral infection along with a ban on public gatherings and shutdown of education institutes.

“The next phase is critical … If we take precautions, our facilities are enough to cope with it [the pandemic],” he said while defending the government’s response and policy to deal with the disease.

“It is our duty to make people realize how important it is to save the elderly and those with comorbidities,” he said.

The prime minister said his government faced “a lot of pressure” for not imposing a strict lockdown across the country. “We put up with a lot of criticism,” he said.

“The whole world is saying that the lockdown caused damage,” he said, adding that even the developed countries could not bear such drastic measures.

Khan said that the government had offered special incentives for agriculture and construction industry to revive the battered economy.

“We are requesting China to help us in seed development and transfer technology to boost agriculture,” he said.

Experts and public health practitioners, however, are not willing to accept the prime minister’s version and many of them believe that the government is still not ready to take the COVID-19 pandemic seriously.

“We are in a mess. There is a lot of confusion since this government has no uniform policy to deal with the pandemic,” Dr. Qaisar Sajjad, secretary-general of Pakistan Medical Association, told Arab News on Thursday.

He said the government had “intentionally” reduced the number of coronavirus tests in the past couple of days when the positive cases started recording a considerable surge. “We are still testing only symptomatic people, giving a false impression that daily positive numbers are falling,” he said.

Sajjad urged the government to conduct massive testing in the areas where it had imposed smart lockdowns to know the quantum of the problem.

“If the government continued with the same policy, God forbid our health system will crumble in the next couple of weeks,” he warned.