EDITORIAL: It turns out that the decision to reopen all schools, offices and public places full-time was a little premature. Apparently, the third wave of the coronavirus that everybody was dreading has found its way to Pakistan after all, and going by initial reports it’s more potent than expected, so the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) has had to raise the red flag and go back to the previous threat level once again. It’s still too soon to tell for sure but it seems from the official reaction that schools may have taken the lead in spreading the new variant of the virus, especially in Punjab, where an early spring break has now had to be enforced in a number of cities. Perhaps it would have been better not to rush into the decision to reopen especially since the annual break was just around the corner and authorities were doing a fine job of keeping a lid on the positivity rate.
Now suddenly the rate has shot up once again, reaching well above five percent after a number of months, and everything that was slowly being reopened has been shut down all over again. And it goes without saying that now there’s no escaping the inevitable drag these fresh restrictions are going to have on the economy. That this has coincided with the cabinet’s decision to withdraw all sorts of tax exemptions and raise yet more taxes and tariffs, which will further slow down production and industry, is of course another headache for the government. The economic slowdown caused by the many smart- and mini-lockdowns that the government had employed was the main reason behind the hurry to reopen, and now that haste might well cost the economy more than it would have lost otherwise.
That of course makes handling the return to restrictions that much more crucial. If, in the worst case scenario, the situation gets out of control once again then there’s no telling just what sort of economic and social damage the country might suffer. It was after all just around Eid last year that people ignored safety protocols in the rush for seasonal shopping to everybody’s cost and regret. And with people increasingly disappointed by the failure to reopen as expected this time, hopefully they will be responsible enough not to repeat last year’s mistake. The third wave is already upsetting some of the best made plans even in countries where the vaccination drive is well under way. It is sure to cause much more damage in Pakistan, where even the best vaccination efforts will take a while to reach most of the population.
One of the least talked about casualties of the pandemic so far has been children’s education. Many million students across the world, especially in poor countries, who do not have ready access to online learning have been brutally cut off from all forms of education for the better part of a year now. In Pakistan too, while a few elite schools kept children from the more privileged families engaged through even the worst of the lockdown, for far too many students the last year has meant an end to their formal education. And since thousands of schools have simply collapsed because of the financial burdens caused by the closure, a lot of children will simply not have classrooms and teachers to return to even when the good times come back. So the government wasn’t really wrong to give it a very high priority when it was considering which sectors to open up first, even if it wasn’t able to time the whole thing right.
Nevertheless, the focus now must be on damage control and the virus must be contained at all costs. Therefore, the government must immediately brush up its media outreach and warn people in very serious terms that their behaviour will determine how quickly, and how strongly, the whole country comes out of this crisis. The country has so far been able to manage two scares pretty well so far, when the first and second waves came, and it will have to be extremely vigilant to come out on top this time as well. Hopefully, an important lesson would have been learnt from this recent failed attempt to restore normalcy and next time authorities will only push the button when we are well in the clear.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2021
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