Cooperation on Covid

After several months of stringent efforts, the government has succeeded in pushing down the Covid-19 positivity rate in the country to two percent. As a result, for the first time since June 21 only 689 cases were reported on Tuesday, the largest number in Sindh with just over 300 infections, We hope that this improvement can be maintained as the winter respiratory disease season begins, and that the government will keep up its efforts to ensure SOPs are followed, as it is currently doing by imposing penalties on those who have not had themselves vaccinated in the public sector, and in some private sector organisations as well. Schools have now been allowed to resume classes as normal across the country, ending the 50 percent daily attendance rate put in place to protect children from infection. But along with the government measures, and the drive to vaccinate as many people as possible, with mobile teams now also set up and vaccination extended to all those over 12 years of age, we need the people to cooperate more fully. Even now, it is possible to see people everywhere without masks and many who have refused to vaccinate themselves instead opting to acquire fake certificates or fake data which will allow them to acquire these certificates. Measures are required again to check such wrongdoing which can obviously take place only with the cooperation of those in official places. If this can happen, travel restrictions still in place for Pakistan should begin to disappear.

But as viral videos continue to float about the risk of vaccination and about the dangers of giving vaccines to children, we need to educate people better about Covid-19 and how it can be stopped. This can only happen if people across the country are willing to cooperate and themselves adopt the discipline we need both so that still more people can be vaccinated as the drive continues and SOPs put in place by the government are fully respected. This is not an easy task in a nation not accustomed to discipline. But it is one which will have to be adopted and public influences of all kinds – teachers, doctors, mosque imams, celebrities and others – need to step in to help in this effort.