Shehbaz Sharif demands immediate lockdown of country

Opposition leader in National Assembly and PML-N president Shehbaz Sharif has demanded imposition of immediate lockdown to save the precious lives form increasing coronavirus threat.

He demanded the government to immediately start preparations for a complete lockdown of the country and make final arrangements for the provision of food and other facilities to the people during the lockdown.

He said the coronavirus crisis was deepening and any further delay would jeopardise the lives of the Pakistani people.

He said Pakistan should adopt the Chinese model of lockdown to control the spread of the disease.

He said any delay would be resulted in a human tragedy at large scale which would not be acceptable and Pakistan and the PTI government would be held responsible if such situation arises.

Imran Khan-led government is still reluctant to go for a complete lockdown to minimise the coronavirus spread as the government is of the view that the economic impact of the lockdown would be huge and the poor and labourer segment of the society would suffer the most because of lockdown.

Separately, all the provincial governments are heading towards the lockdown and have appealed the people to stay at home for next three days.

So far Pakistan has 544 confirmed COVID-19 patients with three deaths while five patients have been recovered from the life-threatening disease. 48 new cases were reported on Saturday till the filing of this story with Sindh the worst hit province where 14 new cases took the tally to 267. Punjab reported eight new case as the coronavirus patients reached 104 in the most populous province of the country. Eleven new cases emerged in Balochistan where total number of patients is 103.

In Gilgit-Baltistan total number of patients rose to 31 with 10 new patients while in KP four new cases emerged to take the tally to 27. In Federal Capital Islamabad, one patient has been reported to recover from the disease while one new patient tested positive. There are now 11 coronavirus patients in the Federal Capital while Azad Kashmir remained the safest place where there was reported no new patient and so far has only one patient who has tested positive for COVID-19.