The World Health Organization (WHO) has heaped praises for Pakistan for suppressing the coronavirus while keeping its economy afloat. WHO chief, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, wrote this in an op-ed in the British newspaper, The Independent. He noted that the country used its well-established infrastructure for polio to combat COVID-19.
Community health workers who have been trained to go door-to-door vaccinating children against polio have been redeployed and utilized for surveillance, contact tracing, and care.
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He said that this strategy suppressed the virus and helped the country stabilize and let its economy pick up once again.
[Pakistan’s response reinforces] the lesson that the choice is not between controlling the virus or saving the economy; the two go hand-in-hand.
Tedros also hailed the efforts of several other countries, notably Thailand, Italy, and Uruguay, for their handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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He said that the ‘grim milestone’ of one million infection-related deaths should spur the world into the fight-back mode, urging that it is ‘never too late to turn things around.’
No matter where a country is in an outbreak, it is never too late to turn things around.
The WHO chief was hopeful with the developments on anti-coronavirus vaccines worldwide. While the world awaits scientific breakthroughs, he said, the virus could also be controlled through defined health protocols.