Sindh Health Minister warns of grim situation amid COVID-19

Sindh Health Minister Azra Pechuho has warned that as hospitals in the province are running out of beds, soon coronavirus cases would emerge from every home.

According to media reports, in her recent statements, Azra Pechuho said there had been a significant rise in the coronavirus cases in the country since the lockdown had been lifted by mid-May (during Ramadan).

She said that if lockdown was continued in the country, the ongoing health crisis would not have become so grim.

Azra added that a similar upsurge of coronavirus cases had been earlier witnessed in developed countries like Italy and the United States where the number of beds and ventilators in hospitals had become inadequate to treat patients of the dread virus.

The minister, while criticizing federal authorities, said coronavirus was not taken seriously. It was considered as simple flu by them, she added.

“These people want hundreds of thousands of people to die while hundreds of thousands of people face immense hardships as they get no hospital bed. This is going to happen as this is what it seems after the steep rise in cases we have witnessed.”

She said the demands of the Sindh government for enforcing lockdown in the country, implementing social distancing measures, and provision of facial masks to the people had been disregarded by the federal government.

She added that Prime Minister Imran Khan sent a very wrong message to the people regarding the adoption of social distancing measures when on television screens he was seen having meetings with up to 50 people in attendance without wearing a mask.

The minister maintained that the coronavirus crisis had become unbearable in other provinces also as she mentioned a report of the Punjab government that presented an estimate of up to 700,000 COVID-19 cases in Lahore alone.