RESULTS: A. COVID-19 EPIDEMIOLOGY IN PAKISTAN:
Pakistan reported its first case on February 26’2020. On March 10’2020, Pueyo (2020) an engineer, suggested a model to predict the rise in the COVID-19 cases based on either, total number of deaths or total number of positive cases. Based on that on March 16’2020, a journalist and an engineer Osama Rizvi and Ahsan Zahid (2020) suggested the trajectory of COVID-19 in Pakistan, if efficient and timely preventive measures are not in place. They stated on March 16’2020, that based on 94 true positive cases of COVID-19 in Pakistan, likely true cases in a month could be 79,419. Fortunately, by March 29’2020, around 15 days later, the total number of confirmed cases were, 1,526 with 29 recovered and 14 deaths. Critical cases treated in Intensive Care Unit were 11, which contributes to 0.7% of total cases. Daily cases receiving treatment were 1483, which amounts to 97.2% of total cases or, 7 confirmed cases per million population. Fatality Rate was 0.9% of the total cases, and Positive Rate was 1.9% of the total cases (Corona Tracker, n.d.). While on April 5’2020, total number of COVID-19 lab tested positive cases were 2,450, and 35 deaths (World Health Organization COVID-19 Dashboard, n.d.). However, on April 3’2020, the Prime Minister of Pakistan announced to reopen China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project and construction industry from April 4’2020, considering the rising economic pressures (The Nation, 2020). If Pueyo (2020) model of COVID-19 trajectory is applied on the increasing growth rate of COVID-19 in Pakistan, which is 23.5% as of April 4, 2020, then Pakistan faces a great threat of blow up in the situation. With the industries reopening, how will curve of COVID-19 change, and what will be the strategy of Pakistan to tackle its COVID-19 and economy both, are the answers that need to be monitored in the future.
Daily situation report of COVID-19 in Pakistan, collected from the daily situation report published by National Institute of Health (n.d.), Pakistan is mentioned below in Table-1.
Table-1: Daily Situation Report of COVID-19 in Pakistan
Below is the graphical representation of growth rate of COVID-19, by calculating cumulative COVID-19 positive cases as of April 2’2020 in Pakistan. The data was collected from the official statistics shared by National Institute of Health (n.d.).
Figure-1: A graph of compound growth rate of COVID-19 positive cases in Pakistan
In Table-2, as of April 16’202, the regional statistics of COVID-19 in Pakistan, collected from Pak Wired (n.d.) are mentioned below.
Table 2: Regional statistics of COVID-19 in Pakistan