Pakistan ahead of others, says Qureshi as Opposition attacks govt over Covid-19

The number of Covid-19 cases jumped to 31,684 in Pakistan on Monday. So far, 667 people have died due to the disease in the country.

As the number of coronavirus disease cases rise in Pakistan, Opposition parties slammed the Imran Khan government for mishandling the crisis. The Opposition questioned the government’s move to ease lockdown.

The criticism was led by Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) leader and former defence minister Khawaja Asif in the National Assembly.

“The current situation that we are in is due to the approximately two months-long negligence showed by the government. When we had fewer deaths, the entire country was completely shut down. Now that we are seeing a dangerous spike in cases, they are easing lockdown restrictions,” he said on Monday.

The National Assembly convened after a gap of nearly two months due to the coronavirus pandemic. Speaker Asad Qaiser is among those who contracted the virus and is under recovery.

“Two weeks ago, we were told that our testing capacity will be increased to 50,000. But now we are being told that it is only 20,000,” said Asif.

Pakistan People’s Party chairman Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said that the federal government was impeding efforts of the Sindh government to address the coronavirus crisis. He said that an ordinance prepared by the provincial government was not allowed by the governor.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi defended the government’s handling of the pandemic, saying the situation of Covid-19 in Pakistan was different as compared to Europe and the United States.

“Our death and infection rate is 2.17 per cent. Across the world this percentage is 6.8. So we have been largely spared from the larger consequences of this pandemic,” he said.

Qureshi also claimed that Pakistan was ahead of other South Asian countries in handling the coronavirus crisis.

Minister of Economic Affairs Hammad Azhar said hunger was as much a threat to Pakistan as the coronavirus itself. “Ours is not a western developed country where people can sit home and eat. We have to balance hunger and poverty with the virus,” he said in the National Assembly.

He said that if the government continued with the lockdown, 20 million people would go below the poverty line.

The number of Covid-19 cases jumped to 31,684 in Pakistan. Out of these, Punjab registered 11,568 cases, Sindh 12,017, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 4,875, Balochistan 2,017, Islamabad 679, Gilgit-Baltistan 442 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 86 patients.

A total of 28 more people have died in the last 24 hours, taking the tally of Covid-19 deaths in Pakistan to 667. Another 8,212 recovered so far.