COVID-19: World should learn from Pakistan, says WHO chief
‘The result we see a significant drop in the number of coronavirus cases’ says Adhanom
Islamabad: Pakistan’s successful handling of the coronavirus pandemic is getting international recognition and even the World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom has praised the country saying it is among those that the world needs to learn from.
Adhanom in a statement at a media briefing endorsed the Pakistan government’s strategy against the virus and deploying of the infrastructure “built up over many years for polio to combat COVID-19.”
The WHO chief also praised community health workers of the country who have been trained to go door-to-door vaccinating children for polio.
“They have been utilized for surveillance, contact tracing and care and the result we see a significant drop in the number of coronavirus cases”, said Adhanom.
The other countries he mentioned included Thailand, Cambodia, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Rwanda, Senegal, Italy, Spain and Vietnam.
“Many of these countries have done well because they learned lessons from previous outbreaks of SARS, MERS, measles, polio, Ebola, flu and other diseases,” continued Adhanom.
Responding to Adhanom’s statement, former Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health Dr. Zafar Mirza termed it as a recognition of Pakistan’s efforts at the international level.
In a tweet, Dr. Mirza stated: “Pakistan included among seven countries by WHO Director General- countries that the world can learn from about how to fight future pandemics. Great honour for the people of Pakistan. Alhamdolilah.”
Teachers being tested
Meanwhile, in the federal capital health teams of Islamabad’s District Health Office (DHO) are conducting coronavirus tests of the teachers and non-teaching staff as well ahead of schools reopening from September 15.
“After schools, public sector universities and colleges will be our target”, said a senior official of the DHO while talking to Gulf News.
There are a total of 423 schools, big and small, under the umbrella of the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) and since Class IX and Class X are resuming from Sept 15 authorities are taking every possible precautionary measure to check the spread of coronavirus that has dropped considerably in the country.
According to the Education Ministry of the country, Classes VI-VIII are scheduled to reopen from Sept 23 while primary classes will resume from Sept 30.
“We are pretty sure to complete COVID-19 tests of all the schools’ teaching and non-teaching staff before reopening educational institutions”, said the official of the FDE.
More than 300,000 cases
Pakistan today reported 300,371 cases of coronavirus with 548 new cases emerging in the last twenty-four hours. The number of recoveries is also going up fast and 288,206 cases of coronavirus have been recovered so far (256 in one day).
A total of 6,370 deaths have been caused because of coronavirus with five casualties in the last twenty-four hours.
The number of critical cases has also dropped to 535 showing a promising picture of the overall coronavirus situation in the country. According to the health ministry’s portal a total of 29,534 tests were conducted during the last 24 hours taking the total number of tests to 2,879 million.