Govt asked to seek Chinese help against pandemic

LAHORE Pakistan-China Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCJCCI) President Zarak Khan has urged the Pakistani government to benefit from the Chinese expertise to control further spread of coronavirus in Pakistan.

Presiding over a meeting of the medical and economic experts at PCJCCI, he said that Pakistan’s economy was not able to sustain the economic loss as it was being borne by the developed countries like China. Therefore, he called upon the government to seek help of the Chinese experts who have done miracle in combating coronavirus by protecting hundreds of thousands of people in China. He said, “They fought rigorously with innovate approach on a scale that we have never seen in history. I think the key learning from China is ‘speed’, the faster you can find the cases, isolate the cases, the more successful you are going to be in eradicating COVID-19.”

He said China had linked emergency centres to the public through tracking and in this way they were successful to monitor each and every citizen. He thanked Chinese government and the nation for supplying 12,000 test kits, 300, 000 masks, 10,000 protective suits and 4 million US dollar to build coronavirus specific hospital.

Senior Vice-President Moazzam Ghurki paid tributes to China for fighting against fatal coronavirus bravely and intelligently. He said that China had built two new 1,000 and 100 bed hospitals to fight the disease.

One of the hospitals was constructed in six days and the other in 15 days. PCJCCI Secretary General Salahuddin Hanif hoped that Pakistan would succeed in fight against the outrageous coronavirus by seeking help from China. He appealed to the people of Pakistan to follow the instructions given by the government in this regard.

Jawad: Barabri Party Pakistan Chairman Jawad Ahmad has said the observation by the chief justice of Pakistan regarding the preventive measures against coronavirus is a reflection of the fact that the steps the government has taken so far to prevent the monstrous disease are inadequate.

According to the international standards, if one coronavirus patient appears in a city, the disease is transmitted to 27 more people. In Pakistan, the number of beds allocated for the disease patients is only 1,870 and there is a very small number of health professionals available to help cure the disease, said Jawad Ahmad.

“Only one person both enters the patient data and provides medicines, and if we talk about ventilators, the provincial governments have just woken up, whereas, they already knew about the lack of ventilators in the tenures of previous governments,” he said.

Coronavirus was not born in Pakistan but rather it entered the country through airports and borders which shows the government's inability to complete the arrangements in this regard, said the Barabri Party Pakistan chairman while talking at a meeting of the party's Central Working Committee.

held: Lahore police have arrested 176 people on charges of violation of Section 144 imposed by Punjab government in the wake of coronavirus and overcharge for masks and sanitizers.

Total 60 cases were registered for violation of Section 144 and overcharging for facemasks and sanitizers. City division police arrested 50 accused, Cantt division 21, Civil Lines division 35, Sadr division 22 and Iqbal Town division police arrested 28 accused.

DIG Operations Lahore Rai Babar Saeed has directed a crackdown on the shopkeepers who are overcharging for masks and sanitizers.

Functions prohibited: Additional Chief Secretary Home Momin Agha has prohibited all functions, ceremonies and social gatherings at home or on private premises along with operation of all gyms and snooker clubs. The order would remain enforced in the entire Punjab province till April 4, 2020.