ISLAMABAD - Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar has again appealed to the people to strictly follow the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to contain the spread of Covid-19 in the country.
Addressing the media after a meeting at the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) on the COVID-19 situation here Wednesday, he regretted that people are not following the SOPs of Coronavirus as they did during the first wave of the pandemic.
He said the NCOC has observed that people are not following precautionary measures against the virus as carefully as they did during the pandemic’s first wave. He said Pakistan successfully overcame the first wave of the pandemic, and it can again achieve the same success by adhering to the SOPs.
The minister said the government has made some important and difficult decisions to control the pandemic, which proved quite effective.
He said the government will soon announce a relief package for the sectors closed in the second wave of the pandemic.
The minister said Prime Minister Imran Khan will chair a meeting of the National Coordination Committee on Covid-19 today to review the latest situation about Coronavirus in the country and take necessary decisions. The meeting will also be attended by the provincial chief ministers, he added. He said NCOC has witnessed 60 deaths per day on average and four percent increase in Corona patients during the last two months.
He warned that the government could impose more restrictions in the coming weeks if the Coronavirus situation doesn’t change and cases and deaths continue to increase.
He said if the violations continued, the situation might be such in a week or two that they have no option but to enforce restrictions on more sectors.
He said the forum would propose in today’s meeting of the National Coordination Committee that a relief package be announced for the sectors on which restrictions have been placed. He also paid tributes to the doctors and paramedics who are rendering their services to help people in the pandemic. Meanwhile, the country recorded 60 deaths and 2,963 new Covid-19 cases in the last 24 hours. In the past 24 hours, 60 more people succumbed to the disease, taking the death toll to 8,547.
The total count of active cases is 45,324 and the positivity rate was recorded up to 7.78 percent. According to the NCOC, with fresh infections in the country, the national tally currently stands at 426,142. The highest death toll was recorded in Punjab province during the last 24 hours. Lahore, Multan, Rawalpindi and Peshawar are among the major cities where the tally of Covid-19 critical patients is rising, according to the NCOC.