The National Command and Operation Center (NCOC) will cease to function today (Thursday) after two years of successfully battling against the COVID-19 pandemic.
Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health, Dr. Faisal Sultan, announced last week the closure of the NCOC. He said that all functions, roles, and responsibilities of the NCOC will officially be handed over to the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) Center for Disease Control (CDC).
As the government decided to bid farewell to one of its most successful initiatives to combat the global pandemic, let’s take a look at the achievements of the NCOC in the past couple of years.
The NCOC was set up on 27 March 2020, one month after the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country. The core function of the forum was to analyze and process information and keep the nation updated on the COVID-19 related figures.
Besides, the NCOC was solely responsible for Pakistan’s efforts, policies, and implementation and suggestions to the Prime Minister’s National Coordination Committee (NCC) for timely actions related to the national COVID-19 response. The body comprised specialists from both civil and military institutions. It was headed by Federal Minister for Planning and Development, Asad Umar.
The forum shared the updated COVID-19 figures from across the country at least once a day on its official website and social media platforms.
The NCOC played a key role in raising awareness among the masses regarding the coronavirus. An official of the Ministry of National Health Services told Dawn.com that during the past two years, the NCOC ran 40 free awareness campaigns and saved around Rs. 50 billion of the national exchequer.
Since the start of the pandemic, Pakistan witnessed five waves of the disease, and each wave was successfully contained by the NCOC through a comprehensive combination of data, decision-making, and efficient execution.
The forum devised quick and effective strategies, i.e., smart and micro-lockdowns, to save the lives and livelihoods of the masses. It created comprehensive SOPs for public places, offices, indoor, and outdoor activities to stem the local spread, and ensured strict surveillance of borders and airports.
When it came to vaccination, the NCOC utilized the lessons learned from the polio program — including data analysis, vaccine campaign planning, and community engagement— to coordinate Pakistan’s response to COVID.
The country launched an aggressive vaccination campaign against COVID-19. Special inoculation centers were set up, and an easy registration and certification process was launched to facilitate the masses. Further, an outreach COVID-19 vaccination facility for elderly people was also launched in various parts of the country with the help of provincial governments.
Consequently, around 88 percent of the eligible population has taken the first jab of the vaccine, while over 77 percent of people have been fully vaccinated so far.
As per the recent NCOC data, as many as 244 infections and six deaths by COVID-19 were reported in the country in the past 24 hours. The national positivity rate was 0.82 percent, with 439 patients in critical care.
Pakistan stands in a far better position when compared with other regional countries. India, for example, reported 1,225 COVID-19 cases and 35 deaths during the past 24 hours.
China, the origin country of the pandemic, is witnessing another outbreak. On Wednesday (30 March), local authorities reported nearly 6,000 new infections, most of them in Shanghai, the economic hub of China, which has now been locked down by authorities.
Meanwhile, Iran reported 2,987 new cases during the past 24 hours.
Afghanistan is the only country reporting a lesser number of daily infections, 58, than Pakistan in the region.
Pakistan’s COVID-19 response, led by the NCOC, was appreciated at the international level by the World Health Organization (WHO), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with several other organizations.
In his blog, published last month, Bill Gates admitted that he was “blown away” by the manner Pakistan handled the COVID-19 pandemic despite its fragile healthcare system.
“Last week, I also went to Pakistan, where I visited two of the country’s innovative command centers for fighting diseases, the NEOC for polio eradication and the NCOC for COVID,” he wrote.
“The NEOC uses state-of-the-art information tools developed by the Global Polio Eradication Initiative to track polio so that no child is ever paralyzed by it again,” he added. The NCOC, Gates said, had applied resources and lessons learned from the polio program — including data analysis, vaccine campaign planning, and community engagement— to coordinate Pakistan’s response to COVID. “Both centers blew me away,” the philanthropist added.
While there were numerous issues including the under-reporting and no regard for SOPs among the masses, NCOC worked wonders to keep the disease in check.