Pakistan has the highest testing capacity to date among all of the South Asian countries, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi informed the National Assembly on Monday.
Qureshi told the National Assembly that all political parties had earlier jointly decided to make decisions regarding the coronavirus lockdown in the National Coordination Committee’s (NCC) sessions.
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Noting that the COVID-19 outbreak was an “unprecedented challenge” that has become one of the biggest epidemics after the World War II, Qureshi said health experts around the world were trying their level best to come up with strategies to control the virus till a vaccine could be made.
“Irrespective of Pakistan’s response towards the virus, no country around the world was seen fully prepared to battle out the virus,” the federal minister said. “The world is learning with time.”
Presenting the global figures from the US, UK, and European countries, including Italy, he said Pakistan — being a developing country — showed a productive response, with growing testing capacity, which now stood at 20,000 tests a day.
“Since the virus emerged, Pakistan had eight operational labs but now we have about 70 functional labs for the coronavirus. With improved testing capacity, we will get a clearer picture of the pandemic in the country,” he added.
Qureshi mentioned that to date, Pakistan had the highest testing capacity among all of the South Asian countries.
NA session summoned
The National Assembly session was summoned last week by President Dr Arif Alvi and commenced Monday to debate Pakistan’s current coronavirus situation.
Earlier, a Twitter post from the National Assembly of Pakistan had stated: “The President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan has summoned the session of the National Assembly on Monday, May 11th, 2020 at 3:00 p.m. in the Parliament House.”
The development took place hours after Prime Minister Imran Khan had announced that the government was moving towards easing the coronavirus lockdown across the country.
Speaking after a meeting of the National Coordination Committee (NCC), which is the top COVID-19 decision-making body consisting of high-level civil and military leaders, including the provincial chief executives, PM Imran had said the country would be opened “in a phased manner”.
