Is the flattened COVID-19 curve slowly becoming a reality?

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Lahore, 12th July: It is reported that Pakistan’s decision to impose smart or selective lockdowns in hotspot areas is yielding desired results.

According to the reports, the country reports a 28% reduction in critical cases due to smart lockdowns and implementation of SOPs.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had unexpectedly appreciated the strategy developed by Pakistan in combating the deadly virus situation.

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In a subtle acknowledged on Twitter, Guterres said that there is no choice between health or jobs in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. They are interlinked. We will either win on all fronts or fail on all fronts,” said the UN Secretary-General.

According to data collected by The Express Tribune, a significant reduction in the number of positive cases has emerged as the country crossed the 100-day mark in its fight against the respiratory disease which has claimed more than 5,000 lives.

It is reported that a reduction was recorded in the number of critical cases as a result of the selective lockdowns and implementation of SOPs introduced by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC).

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The strategy

The concept of smart lockdowns, when presented by Prime Minister Imran Khan, was fiercely opposed.
But now as the country appears to be on course to flatten the COVID-19 curve, its strategy is being endorsed by a number of developed nations.

Germany, Italy, and Portugal are now considering local shutdowns to prevent a new surge of coronavirus infections. More and more countries are shutting down smaller regions as opposed to bringing their entire nations to a halt.

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“The only solution as the world has discovered is a smart lockdown, which allows for economic activity with SOPs. We are amongst the pioneers of this approach,” the prime minister said in his post on Twitter.

Experts believe that the policy appears to have been validated by a recent report by Oxfam. A leading charitable organization in the UK warned that the coronavirus pandemic could kill more people through hunger than the disease itself.

“Many people in middle-income countries who were on the breadline are also said to have been tipped over the edge by the health crisis,” said Oxfam.

Smart lockdowns

With the help of the National Command and Control Center (NCOC), the government had imposed more than 500 smart lockdowns across the country.

“So far, we imposed 551 smark lockdowns across the country,” said one senior official at the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), which serves as the nation’s nerve center in the battle against COVID-19. In total, 8.2 million are currently under lockdown,” he revealed.

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Active campaigns coupled with the smart lockdowns, the NCOC official said, have helped Pakistan in flattening the COVID-19 curve, which has infected more than 247,000 people.

Sharing details about the campaigns the NCOC official said there has been a shift in behavior in the country. “Through administrative efforts and consistent campaigning, the use of face masks has increased by 1,400%, and the use of gloves has increased by 766%,” he said. Similarly, the use of N-95 masks, the official said, has increased by 5,200% in the country.

Lockdown comparison

Asad Umar pointed out that despite extreme lockdowns in India, their number of positive cases is 10 times more than Pakistan.

“Our curve has come down and their trajectory appears to be heading in the wrong direction,” the minister said while presenting the country’s report card.

According to the Covidtracker.com, Pakistan has managed to keep the fatality rate down to 2.1%. On the other hand, neighboring India appears to be failing in that area. Despite Prime Minister Modi’s experiments with enforcing the harshest and most extensive COVID-19 lockdown, the country’s fatality rate remains at 2.7%.

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India, at one point, decided to impose a lockdown of 1.3 billion people for 21 days and that too at a few hours notice, which was a catastrophic mistake.

Arundhati Roy, the Indian author, and political activist termed the lockdown as an act of “social compression”.

“Unemployment was at a 45-year high before the lockdown. The lockdown is estimated to have cost 135 m jobs,” Roy said in an article published in a London-based financial daily.

However, India reported the highest single-day spike during the past 24-hours where 475 deaths were reported and 26,506 new cases came into light, despite a strict lockdown.

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