COVID-19 Pandemic in Pakistan

Abstract

Since February 26, 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic emerged in Karachi City and rapidly spread throughout Pakistan. In the first seven weeks, the disease affected more than 6,200 people and more than 111 deaths were reported. If we compare the disasters of COVID-19 in Pakistan with other countries like China, Iran and European Union nations, so many questions arise. We have many challenges in controlling this pandemic, including the geopolitics of country, poverty, low literacy rate, environmental conditions, hygienic conditions, and food intake habits. In all these aspects there are poor conditions but the outbreak of COVID-19 in Pakistan was slower than other developing countries. Pakistan’s humid condition hot weather, early response to COVID-19, population immune system, BCG vaccination, and the number of young people appear to attenuate the impact of COVID-19. In this paper, we discuss the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in China, Iran and Pakistan and share day-by-day developments of this pandemic. We present the structure of COVID-19 and its similarity with SARS-COV and SARS-COV2. We also discuss treatment procedures and their disadvantages, including use of Remdesivir (an adenosine analog) used against RNA viruses, Chloroquine (an extensively used anti-malarial drug), convalescent plasma, neutralizing antibody targeting the ACE-2 receptor, and an ACE-2-like molecule that might bind to the S protein of the coronavirus. The impact of COVID-19 on the economics of Pakistan and government reliefs are also discussed.