ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health, Zafar Mirza gave a briefing to the National Coordination Committee on Coronavirus (NCOC) on Sunday while also discussing new strategies to tackle the menace, ARY News reported.
SAPM Mirza in his briefing said that the government was planning on hiring retired government doctors under contract to curb the dearth of doctors and paramedics in the country amidst the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
Read More: Wearing masks at crowded public places mandatory now: SAPM Zafar Mirza
He also said that dedicated call centres for coronavirus will soon be established in all the provinces to address people’s concerns and answer their questions on the virus.
Zafar Mirza also told the NCOC that the province of Sindh and Balochistan were not readu to undertake and impose the idea of a smart lockdown like in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
He said that both provincial governments have backed the quarantined isolation method of keeping the effects and spread of the virus minimal.
Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar chairing the NCOC session said that the government will ask the business and trading community of Pakistan to help out in implementation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) to stay safe and minimize spread of the pathogen.
Asad Umar urged that shopkeepers must adopt the policy of refusing to conduct business with a customer who is not wearing a face mask.
Read More: NCOC finds discrepancies in Sindh’s COVID-19 data, centralized RMS introduced
Umar said that the NCOC was simultaneously working on short-term and long-term strategies and methods to deal with the coronavirus and a part of the strategy has been advised to be strict punishments for those that fail to adhere and abide by set SOPs for coronavirus.
The minister also talked about the added advantage of centralized Resource Management System (RMS) for coronavirus and how it would help provinces to keep better tabs on the spread of the virus and also help common folk to find healthcare availibility in case of showing coronavirus symptoms.
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