There has been enough improvement on the covid-19 front for the National Command and Operation Centre to relax a number of restrictions, such as on wedding halls and cinemas, which involve large gatherings. However, those relaxations will only work if there is a corresponding insistence on social distancing, masking and vaccinations. The managements of such establishments must ensure that admission is given only to those who can prove they have been vaccinated, and must police both social distancing and masking.
As a symbol of changing priorities, the conversion of the Lahore Expo Centre into a dengue hospital may be appropriate, from a covid-19 vaccination centre. But the government strategy of hoping that the dengue vector, the aedes aegypti mosquito, will die out over the winter is about as wrongheaded as the forlorn hope last year that the summer heat would kill off the coronavirus. Matters have been made worse by the fact that the winter has not really started yet, which means the government has to deal with the vector at once. There has been enough of a change in the weather for smog to have begun. That will bring its own crop of respiratory diseases. On top of all this, typhoid is raising its head, making it pressingly urgent to examine the water supply.
The pity is that all of these are recurring problems, and a modicum of forethought would have enabled the government to avoid any of these challenges becoming a crisis, which all are becoming. The government should not allow the almost mandatory bout of self-congratulation over its successes in handling the covid-19 pandemic cover its ostrich-like behaviour over the other public health challenges that have cropped up. The meeting by Lahore Mayor Lt Col (retd) Mubasher may help diagnose the issue. His inaugural meeting was devoted to dengue. Not only is the MCL responsible for mosquito spraying, but water supply is also the responsibility of local councils. The PTI should remember that many basic public health measures, which are usually enough to prevent many seasonal diseases, have to be taken by the local councils which the PTI is penalising for belonging to the PML(N). The PTI must not forget that disease knows no party distinctions.
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