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Abstract
COVID-19 outbreak was first time experienced in the Wuhan City of China at the end of December 2019. Which spread rapidly in China and then worldwide in 209 countries of America, Europe, Australia and Asia including Pakistan. There are more than fifty thousand mortalities and one million plus people have been affected worldwide, while figure increases rapidly. Different steps have been taken worldwide for the control of COVID-19. Even with less resources Pakistan also taken rigorous measures like designed special hospitals, Laboratories for testing, quarantine facilities, awareness campaign and lock down to control the spread of virus. We highlighted the efforts of government to combat this deadly pneumonia.
Keywords
Control
COVID-19
Current scenario
Facilitations
Pakistan
SARS-CoV-2
Introduction
The COVID-19 outbreak was treated as a case of pneumonia with unknown etiology appeared in the Wuhan city of China, at the end of December 2019, which spread across the country to worldwide with a high rate [1]. The PRC (People's Republic of China) Centre for Disease Control (CDC) analyzed the respiratory samples and declared that the pneumonia was caused by a novel coronavirus which named the pneumonia as Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (NCP) [2]. The coronavirus is one of the major virus that target the respiratory system of the human [3]. The Chinese researchers named the virus as 2019-nCoV [4]. Later, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Virus named the novel coronavirus as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) [5]. On the same day, February 11, 2020 the World Health Organization (WHO) name the Pneumonia as Coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) [6].
The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID 19 outbreak as sixth public health of emergency Services (SPHEC) on January 30, 2020 [7]. This was not the first outbreak of the coronavirus. The previous coronavirus outbreaks include Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) outbreak and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) outbreak [8]. The COVID-19 thought the third outbreak of the coronavirus which affected more than 209 countries including Pakistan. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), total of 1,093,349 confirmed cases with 58,620 mortalities. To date, the number of highest positive cases encountered in USA followed by Italy and Spain [9].
The border countries of Pakistan highly affected including China, where the COVID-19 outbreak experienced first time. In the west, Italy with highest number of COVID-19 mortalities while in the north, Iran a high number of mortalities after the Italy [10]. In Pakistan, the first case of COVID-19 has been confirmed by the Ministry of Health, government of Pakistan on February 26, 2020 in Karachi, Sindh province. On the same day another case confirmed by the Pakistan Federal Ministry of Health in Islamabad [11,12]. Within fifteen days, the number of total confirmed cases (COVID-19 Positive) reached to twenty (20) out of 471 suspected cases with highest numbers in the Sindh province followed by the Gilgit Baltistan. All of the confirmed cases had recent travel history from Iran, Syria and London. And currently these cases increase by high rate and the situation is worst [13].
The geographical location of Pakistan, with the continuous increases in the number of CVOID-19 positive cases need a high level of action, planes and management. On 12th of February, the Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation & Coordination Pakistan presented a plane “National Action Plan for Preparedness & Response to Corona Virus Disease (Covid-19) Pakistan”, the aims to control the spreading of virus and to strengthen country and community emergency preparedness in order to ensure a timely, efficient and effective response to potential events due to Covid-19 including. The local, regional and national outbreaks that can have a significant impact on the health of Pakistani population and society [14]. To date, different steps have been taken by the government of Pakistan against COVID-19 outbreak. In this review, we highlighted the different steps taken by the government of Pakistan against CoVID-19, such as designated hospitals, quarantine centers, testing facilities, treatments, public awareness and the response of local community against COVID-19 outbreak.
Current situation in Pakistan
According to the Ministry of Health, government of Pakistan, there are total of 3277 confirmed positive cases in the country with 18 critical and 50 mortalities on Monday, April 6, 2020. The highest cases appeared in the Punjab province (1493) followed by Sindh (881), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (405), Balochistan (191), Gilgit baltistan (210), Federal (82) and Azad Jammu & Kashmir have 15 confirmed cases. The results have heen shown in figure. To date, the highest number of mortalities occurred in Khyber pakhtunkhwa with 16, followed by Punjab (15), Sindh (15), Gilgit Baltistan (3), Balochistan (1). A total of 85 infected people have been recovered in Sindh province, followed by KP (30), Balochitsan (17), and Punjab (25) GB (9) and AJK have one recovery till date as summarized in Table 1. The mortality rate in Pakistan is 1.3% and recovery rate is 4.8% [15].