Daily Times

Pakistan reported its first COVID-19 case on February 26. Since then, amid a poorly-executed countrywide lockdown, it has reached a total of 24,648 confirmed cases and 585 deaths, as of May 7. Although you may argue that these COVID-19 figures are low when compared to the US and Europe, they are certainly far from depicting the real picture. As of May 5, Pakistan has tested some 232,582 samples, which is alarmingly low when compared to other countries. Additionally, the testing numbers differ by states.

Herd immunity is touted to be a potential strategy that various weak economic countries with a major young population can pursue, for instance, Pakistan. Herd immunity means you get the majority of your population infected by the virus and recover as a result. When you get infected and recover, you, thus, gain resistance or immunity from the virus. Since the approach is extremely controversial, numerous countries, including the UK, have outrightly rejected it.

It seems the government has decided to mass-infect the people of Pakistan and create resistance against COVID-19. Rather than relying on the concept of “herd immunity,” the government should devise a data-based, long-term decentralised process

Although herd immunity is not a new concept, it has been used against lethal diseases, such as measles, which has a tested and safe vaccine behind it. Unfortunately, COVID-19 doesn’t have any safe and proven vaccine yet. So, employing herd immunity against a novel, highly deadly, and still, the untreatable disease can turn out to be an extensive disaster.

There can be sundry reasons proving herd immunity might not work and become a catastrophic disaster in Pakistan, leading to a high number of hospitalisation of patients, which could cause a nightmare for our already deteriorated health system and may cause an increased number of COVID-19 related deaths, there are three strong reasons that support the above claim.

Firstly, nobody knows much about COVID-19. Experts still have very minute knowledge about coronavirus immunity. For example, what sort of protection does immunity provide a person? If a person gets immunity, how long will it last? Would the immunised person get reinfected by the virus? Researchers, including the WHO, across the world, are still trying to unveil these and many other COVID-19 complexities and questions.

Secondly, the reason you hear about the herd immunity concept in Pakistan is that the country is home to a significant number of young population. More than 64 per cent fall below the age of 30. Thus, the key assumption here is that these large swathes of young people will not be affected like the elders and aged and get immunised on their own without a severe reaction to the virus.

When one looks closely at the given assumption, one can find it hard to ignore the problematic intricacies that the assumption involves. How will the government react and respond when they see a large number of our young people, who have precarious underlying conditions and numerous risk factors, getting infected with COVID-19? Knowing the fact that it may lead to severe health complications or even death!

Consider the argument:

Almost 33 per cent of Pakistani adults, above 45 years, and 18 per cent of young adults, below 45 years, have hypertension. Further, there is approximately 17 per cent of adults facing diabetes while there still remains a large number of people that don’t report it. Nearly 160,000 of those aged between 15 and 49 years are living with HIV. Moreover, five per cent of the population, above the age of 40, is facing severe chronic pulmonary disease and nearly 10 per cent is confronting asthma.

Now, imagine this!

When the young population is laden with such greater rates of comorbidities and other risk factors; leaving them vulnerable and letting the virus spread due to the tentative strategy of herd immunity may cause an unprecedented rise in the number of patients being affected by COVID-19 and getting hospitalised. As a result, it will immensely hurt the country’s poor health system as all critical patients will require intensive care. Not to forget that even if you seek herd immunity within the country’s young people, you will still need to protect the country’s aged population that is above 55, which is about 10 per cent of the country’s total population as they are the ones hanging at the greatest risk.

Saving the aged population, while in tandem pursuing the herd immunity will test the government’s nerves. However, given the current trajectory of the federal government in handling the COVID-19 crisis, it seems successfully executing the strategy is highly unlikely. Thirdly, you just cannot implement herd immunity as an all-alone strategy. It needs to be supported by other powerful strategies. For instance, you have to increase the capacity of the hospitals and health systems in totality across the country; enhance cooperation among various public and private hospitals inside and outside the provinces, thereby covering the entire nation and maintaining a network of a united front against COVID-19, rapid and enhanced testing capacity; protecting the most vulnerable section of the population and lastly, maintaining the social distance and other precautionary measures like face masks and curbing extensive crowd gatherings.

What Pakistan needs is a thorough strategic, decentralised, holistic and long-term approach to tackle COVID-19.

Focusing solely on herd immunity and neglecting all other aspects will serve no purpose.

Instead, the government should focus on implementing a nuanced testing strategy all over the country. In this regard, the federal government should greatly help the provinces in enhancing their testing capacity. As WHO has said, to fight COVID-19, do testing, testing, and testing. Simply because without testing, you don’t know who is the carrier and how much of the country has already been affected. The current state of testing is still far from satisfactory.

Further, each province should keenly focus on its contact-tracing efforts. Additionally, the provinces need to enhance their treatment and isolation strategies. Seeing the current sad state of different isolation camps across Pakistan, many depict a worse picture.

The federal government has finally decided to ease the lockdown in phases. This means more interaction among people. Will the people of Pakistan abide by the precautionary measures that the government has laid against COVID-19? Looking at the past few agreements carried out by the government, the picture is extremely gloomy. Has the federal government, in its nationwide address, said anything about giving a helping hand to provinces on testing, isolation centres, tracing and other steps to curb COVID-19? I am afraid not, as they were intricately busy constructing a nexus between COVID-19 and traffic accidents! Brace yourself! The ride is about to get bumpy!

The writer is a freelance columnist with an MSc degree in Defence and Strategic Studies from Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, and has been writing for multiple publications