PM explains why he's still against full-scale lockdown

Prime Minister Imran Khan has expressed his hesitance towards imposing a full-scale lockdown in the country, and said that it would impact the economy drastically and the poor segments of society the most. The prime minister urged the leadership of all the political parties to discuss and reassess their strategies in order to find a way to tackle the situation due to outbreak of coronavirus.
Addressing a meeting of the parliamentary leaders chaired by National Assembly Speaker Asad Qaiser at the Parliament House on Wednesday, the prime minister stressed upon continuously reviewing the steps taken by the provinces to contain the spread of coronavirus as these would have an economic impact.
He said that it was not possible to "rationally judge the repercussions of decisions taken out of fear and panic". The prime minister said that Gilgit-Baltistan was facing fuel shortage and on Tuesday supply from the port was stopped due to lockdown in Karachi and we had to take necessary steps in this regard.
He called for lifting the ban on transport as he said this would badly affect the supply of essential items in the country. The prime minister said, "Wheat is being harvested, diesel will be required in villages for transport. I feel that this lockdown will affect our construction industry [...] and there will be unemployment on a huge scale."
He said that if we take the lockdown at the extreme stage of curfew then the situation could become worse and the poor people, particularly daily wagers would be severely affect on a large scale. The prime minister said that the federal government could not do this alone, "we have to have a national response to fight the epidemic." He told the parliamentary leaders that until yesterday out of the 900 coronavirus cases reported in Pakistan, only 153 were locally transmitted. Requesting the political leadership of the country to give their input and suggestions, the prime minister said, "We have a meeting of National Coordination Committee today (Thursday), where we will review the situation arising out after the lockdown."
He said that there were multiple levels of lockdown and the curfew was the last one. The prime minister added that his concern was the poor section of the society, which will face the brunt of such measures. He said that Sindh was the first province, which announced to impose lockdown and then under pressure from media all the other provinces and Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Jammu Kashmir followed suit. He said that after the passage of 18th Constitutional Amendment the provinces were free to take their own decisions. Addressing the Taftan controversy, the prime minister said that the army and Balochistan government made great efforts in taking care of the pilgrims coming from Iran.
He said that Iran could not deal with the situation and they brought our nationals to the border, leaving us no option but to allow them back into the country. The prime minister said that our decision to not evacuate students from China (Wuhan province) proved right. "We received criticism from everyone but you see there is no case of coronavirus from China."