There seems to be no end in sight to the ongoing lethal wave of the coronavirus that has hit South Asia. A mutation of the Covid-19 virus, upgraded to the status “variant of concern” by the UK and dubbed as the “double-mutant” has wreaked havoc in India. At the moment, the daily number of new cases and deaths are averaging 400,000 and 4000 daily. According to the WHO, last week India accounted for 46 per cent of global cases and 25 percent of deaths. These astronomical numbers have caused the country’s health system to completely collapse with a severe shortage of beds, ventilators and most worryingly, oxygen. Cremation sites have queues that force families to wait for hours to perform the last rights of their loved ones. India is now going through the worst humanitarian crisis in its history. What is more frightening is the warning issued by some experts that this may only be the beginning and could continue for a considerable period of time. The spillover from India has now hit Nepal that saw a 137 percent increase in cases over a week and is now reporting very similar numbers, forcing the country to go into a full lockdown. Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have also detected cases of the Indian variant. The virality and deadliness of this new mutation has all but eradicated the progress made in terms of vaccinating the population on the road to normalcy.
Pakistan is smack in the middle of all this and thankfully the Indian strain has not made it across our borders so far. Nonetheless, the ongoing third wave in the country has surpassed all statistics posted by the first one. The government, rather reluctantly, has essentially cancelled Eid by placing a weeklong lockdown in the worst hit provinces of Punjab and KP throughout the holidays. The government must make the most of its current position by solidifying it further, restricting inward travel from regional countries that could introduce the new variant in Pakistan. Additionally, it must ramp up its vaccination drive to immunize as much of the population as possible to keep pressure off hospitals and reach herd immunity. Whatever help that can be provided to regional countries should be offered while keeping in view our resource restrictions. Pakistan could also become another Covid-19 disaster zone if the government mishandles the situation. Extreme caution should be taken for the next few months.
