EDITORIAL: The third wave of the Covid-19 is taking a heavy toll all over the country but the situation in Punjab seems particularly grim. The positivity rate in the province is touching 20 percent, the number of deaths and critical patients have spiked, and medical facilities have come under so much pressure that the provincial government has had to order 100 more ventilators. There are also reports that a fair number of deaths, especially among young people, is being associated with failure to provide enough oxygen in time, which shows as well as anything just how much strain the system is under. Going by how authorities are now seriously considering imposing a complete lockdown in most parts of the province, even though they vehemently opposed it earlier because it would compromise the poorest segments of society, it is clear that things are not expected to get any better on their own.
That means, of course, that people have largely let themselves as well as the government down by their general non-serious attitude towards social distancing and wearing masks in public. Even now, when thousands of people are falling prey to the virus every day and upwards of a hundred are dying on most days, people with masks at any time and place in Punjab are very likely to be less than people without them. And it is simply startling that people have still not learned their lessons even though the virus, now in its third wave, has been around in these parts for more than a year. The onset of Ramazan will no doubt also add to the list of concerns of the provincial government as momentum inevitably builds for traditional Eid shopping. It was around this time last year, after all, that people ignored all rules for the holiday season in what was then still the first wave of the pandemic, and as a result the entire economy came close to collapse.
Yet to see Punjab paralysed in this way must have rung very loud alarm bells in Islamabad. It is not only the largest province of the country but also has the fattest budget and takes a lion’s share from the federal divisible pool. Moreover, it has the best hospital network in the country because its medical outlets deliver better results and are more in number and better spread out than in other provinces. For it to struggle in this manner with the third wave even though others, presumably not as well prepared or equipped, are doing better makes for a very alarming situation indeed. The best that can be done now is to speed up the vaccination drive in as orderly a fashion as possible and ensure that social safety protocols are enforced at all places all the time.
No government can be expected to keep a close check on all its peoples in such times; or even in normal time for that matter. Therefore at the end of the day people themselves are responsible for their own safety and the wellbeing of others. Everybody knows very well by now that contracting Covid-19 is not like getting just any other health problem because not only is it still without a confirmed cure but it also spreads much faster and endangers not just the people taking risks but also everybody around them, initiating a chain reaction that then travels very far in all directions. That makes meeting the third wave of the coronavirus a matter of collective responsibility more than anything else. The lockdown that now needs to be imposed will squeeze much out of the economy, of course, but without this painful cure the overall suffering would be even longer and more intense. With vaccination drives progressing all over the world, hopefully, this is the last wave that caught everybody by surprise and hung a sword over most countries’ economies. The last year has been a very trying one for every country and, all things considered, Pakistan handled it better than most of them for the most part. The people of this country now need to show the same kind of discipline that got them out of the grips of the first and second waves so successfully, especially in Punjab.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021