Daily Times

Special Assistant to Prime Minister on National Health Services Dr Zafar Mirza on Wednesday said that the government is pursuing a ‘holistic strategy’ to combat coronavirus.

In a statement issued here in response to a WHO letter, he said, “We have made best sovereign decisions in the best interest of our people.”

Dr Zafar Mirza said that the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) established under the auspices of National Coordination Committee (NCC) for COVID-19 meets every morning at ministerial level. He said that Pakistan is the fifth largest country in the world and largest country in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region which consists of 22 countries. “We are a low middle income country with majority population dependent on daily incomes. Conscious of the disease spread and mortality and having put in place a very robust national coordinating and decision making mechanism at the highest level we have made best sovereign decisions in the best interest of our people,” he said.

“We have to make tough policy choices to strike a balance between lives and livelihoods. We have consciously, but gradually eased generalized lockdowns, but at the same time we have focused on enforcement of SOPs in shops, industry, mosques and public transport while mask donning has been made compulsory in the country,” he said. “Our choice of policies has been guided by the best evidence available about the disease spread and our best assessment of the fast deteriorating socioeconomic conditions in the country,” he added.

Mirza said that WHO was a UN specialized technical agency on health and “they are our long standing partner in health including in this pandemic which we appreciate.” “We understand that it is their role to provide recommendations to member states, but understandably there is the health-lens whereas governments have to take into account a holistic picture and make decisions on relative risk assessment basis and this has been the case in Pakistan all along,” he concluded.