Pakistan continues to grapple with third wave of

coronavirus
Pakistan continues to tighten social distancing and travel
restrictions as it bans all gatherings in areas with a high
number of cases.
Islamabad, Pakistan – Wracked by a third wave of
coronavirus infections, Pakistan continues to tighten social
distancing and movement restrictions, implementing a
new ban on all gatherings in areas with a high number of
cases.
On Sunday, the National Command and Operation Centre
(NCOC), which is managing the country’s coronavirus
response, announced a slew of new measures to attempt to
control the spike in infections, which appear to be centred
in Punjab province and the capital Islamabad.
“All kind of gatherings (indoor/outdoor) will be banned
with immediate effect,” read a statement issued by the
NCOC. “This will include all social, cultural, political,
sports and other events.

The government has also banned all wedding events from

April 5 onwards, although it has given provincial
authorities the prerogative to impose the ban earlier if
needed.
The new regulations will come into effect in cities and
regions where the test-positive rate is higher than 8
percent, based on a three-day rolling average.
Current regulations allow outdoor wedding events for up
to 300 guests, a policy widely criticised by health experts
in Pakistan as being detrimental to efforts to control the
spread of the virus.
The NCOC will also consider this week proposals to reduce
the number of passengers and vehicles used for inter-
provincial transport, including road, air and rail travel.
Pakistan registered 4,525 new cases of the coronavirus in
the last 24 hours, according to official data, with 41 deaths
taking the country’s death toll from the pandemic to
14,256.
Sunday’s rise of 4,525 was the fourth consecutive day of
more than 4,000 new cases a day, the first time that has
happened since the country was coming down from its
first peak of cases in June 2020.
Test-positive rate rising

The proportion of people tested positive for the virus on

Sunday was 11.2 percent, a marker of a continuing upward
trend.
“A high percent positive means that more testing should
probably be done – and it suggests that it is not a good
time to relax restrictions aimed at reducing coronavirus
transmission,” according to Johns Hopkins University
epidemiologists David Dowdy and Gypsyamber D’Souza.
Last year, the World Health Organization’s (WHO)
guidelines suggested test-positive rates must remain below
five percent for two consecutive weeks before government
loosen restrictions.
In Pakistan, low daily testing rates have meant that the
test-positive rate has remained higher than in many other
countries, but the numbers have spiked this month.
The current outbreak of cases is centred around Punjab
province, where the test-positive rate was 17 percent in the
provincial capital Lahore and 15 percent in Rawalpindi
and Faisalabad, according to official data.
The capital Islamabad, a city of roughly two million
people, has seen a large number of infections as well,
registering a test-positive rate of 16 percent on Sunday.

Northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province has also

seen a spike in cases, with the test-positive rate recorded at
23 percent in the Swat valley, 22 percent in the provincial
capital Peshawar and 19 percent in Nowshera, according to
government data.
Pakistan extends school closures amid third wave of
coronavirus
Educational institutions in 18 high-risk districts to
remain shut until April 11, according to the education
minister.
Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistan’s government has
ordered educational institutions in 18 high-risk districts to
remain closed until April 11, the education minister said,
as the country continues to battle a third wave of
coronavirus infections.
Speaking to the press in the capital Islamabad on
Wednesday, Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood said
the decision to extend closures first ordered on March 15
had been taken as virus infection numbers had stayed
high.
“We will continue to review the state of the [pandemic],”
he said. “We are very aware that closing schools
significantly harms the education of children, but our
children’s health is our first priority and we cannot take a
risk with that.”
The districts subject to the closures include 10 regions in
the central province of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous
area, and eight regions in northwestern Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa province. The capital Islamabad is also
subject to closures.
Mahmood said provincial governments had the
prerogative to increase the number of areas where the
restrictions were being tightened if they deemed it
necessary.
Further, he said, high-school students will have to sit for
annual board examinations at the end of the school year,
as opposed to last year when students were granted an
automatic pass based on performance baselines.
A third wave of infections

Pakistan is battling a third wave of infections, with 3,496

new cases of the coronavirus reported in the last 24 hours,
as per the latest government data – the highest number of
daily infections since the country was battling its first wave
in July 2020.

There were 63 deaths due to the coronavirus on

Wednesday, taking the death toll from the pandemic to
14,028, according to government data.
Pakistan has seen a spike in both new infections and its
test-positive rate, a key indicator that the true number of
infections is likely far higher than the reported cases. On
Thursday, the test-positive rate stood at 10.15 percent, its
highest level this year.
Last week, authorities said they were tightening
restrictions and imposing stricter local lockdowns in order
to curb the spread of the virus.
Lockdowns have largely been poorly enforced, however,
and overall regulations still allow for large gatherings such
as outdoor wedding functions attended by up to 300
people.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan tests positive for
COVID
The 68-year-old Pakistani premier is self-isolating after
contracting COVID-19 two days after being vaccinated.
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has tested positive
for COVID-19, his office said, just two days after he was
vaccinated against the disease.
“At this point, the prime minister’s office can only confirm
that the honourable prime minister has tested positive for
COVID-19 and has self-isolated, we will release more
details in due course,” his office said on Saturday.

Khan, 68, received a shot of the Chinese-produced

Sinopharm vaccine on Thursday, as the country battles a
third wave of the virus.
Khan has been holding regular and frequent meetings
lately, including attending a security conference held in
the capital, Islamabad, that was attended by a large
number of people.
He addressed the conference without wearing a mask, and
attended another gathering to inaugurate a housing
project for poor people in a similar fashion on Friday.
The South Asian nation of 220 million is seeing a sharp
rise in coronavirus infections.
According to numbers released by government on
Saturday, 3,876 people tested positive in the last 24 hours 
– the highest number of daily infections since early July –
taking the total number of infections in the country past
620,000.
There were also 42 more deaths, taking the total to 13,799.
Pakistan launched vaccinations for the general public on
March 10, starting with elderly people after seeing a poor
response from front-line health workers, who expressed
concerns about Chinese vaccines.
Chinese Sinopharm and CanSinoBIO, Oxford-
AstraZeneca, and Russia’s Sputnik V vaccines have been
approved for emergency use in Pakistan.

In Pakistan, from 3 January 2020 to 6:28pm CEST, 26

July 2021, there have been 1,004,694 confirmed
cases of COVID-19 with 23,016 deaths, reported to
WHO. As of 26 July 2021, a total of 25,248,858 vaccine
doses have been administered.

Pakistan Struggles to Contain Third COVID-19

Wave

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan is struggling to contain a third

wave of coronavirus infections, reporting close to 4,500
new cases in the last 24 hours, the highest number of
daily infections in nine months.
Officials said Saturday that the rate of people testing
positive for COVID-19 had alarmingly risen to more than
10% from a low of about 3% a couple weeks ago,
suggesting the actual number of infections is likely much
higher than the reported cases.
The overall number of infections and deaths from COVID-
19, however, remains under control in Pakistan, a country
of about 220 million people.
Since the pandemic hit the South Asian nation a year ago,
officials have documented around 650,000 infections and
about 14,200 deaths, including 67 fatalities recorded
Friday.
British variant
Asad Umar, the minister who heads the National
Command and Operation Center (NCOC) overseeing the
government’s COVID-19 response, insisted Saturday that
a British variant of the virus, detected in Pakistan early last
month, was likely behind the flare-up in infections.
“This relatively more contagious and deadlier variant
seems to be a major cause for the sudden and sharp
increase in the spread of the disease," Umar told reporters
after chairing an emergency meeting of the NCOC in
Islamabad.
He added that public “disregard” for safety guidelines
outlined by the government was contributing to the spread.
The minister said his office had already started receiving
messages that hospitals across Pakistan were nearing
capacity and that finding enough beds for coronavirus
patients was becoming a challenge.
Call for public support
Umar urged people to strictly follow health and safety
guidelines to help the government contain the infection,
saying that bringing this “very dangerous situation” under
control was impossible without public support.
The third coronavirus wave is largely being driven by a
high number of cases reported in Punjab, the country’s
most populous province, and the northwestern Khyber-
Pakhtunkhwa province.
The Pakistani government earlier this week ordered
educational institutions in high-risk districts across the two
provinces and the national capital, Islamabad, to remain
closed until April 11, tightening restrictions on public
gatherings in those areas.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is struggling to keep the national

COVID-19 vaccination campaign going because of supply
challenges and vaccine hesitance.
Last month, the government began inoculating frontline
health care workers and citizens age 60 and over after
receiving a donation of 1 million doses of China’s
Sinopharm vaccine. Beijing announced a donation of
another 500,000 doses and Islamabad is awaiting the
delivery.
Umar said this week that the national campaign had
already vaccinated more than 700,000 people across
Pakistan, raising concerns the government will soon run
out of the drug.
Officials said Pakistan was supposed to receive several
million doses of coronavirus vaccine from the World
Health Organization's COVAX program in the first week of
March.
But the vaccine did not come because of supply issues,
and the delay has forced Islamabad to explore other
options to fill the gap and try to ramp up the national
vaccination drive.
COVAX aims to vaccinate people in low- and middle-
income countries against COVID-19.
Purchases from China
Federal Health Minister Faisal Sultan said this week that
his government had purchased just over a million doses of
the Chinese vaccine and that the consignment would
arrive in the country later this month. He added Pakistan
was also planning to buy additional Chinese vaccine to
ensure its citizens are inoculated against COVID-19.
WHO’s chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, urged the
global community on Friday to donate COVID-19 vaccines
to lower-income countries, citing the urgent need for 10
million doses for the COVAX vaccine distribution program.
“COVAX is ready to deliver but we can’t deliver vaccines
we don’t have,” Tedros told a virtual news conference in
Geneva.
“Bilateral deals, export bans and vaccine nationalism have
caused distortions in the market with gross inequities in
supply and demand,” Tedros said. “Ten million doses are
not much and it’s not nearly enough.”