The Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) warned on Tuesday that the government’s decision to allow indoor dining and marriages at restaurants and wedding halls for vaccinated people from next month could lead to a fourth coronavirus wave in the first week of August, following the religious Eid-ul-Azha holiday.
The medical professionals raised questions regarding the mechanism to implement the directives for restaurants, cinemas and marriage halls to only serve vaccinated people.
“Every time our number of cases start going down, we become complacent and reopen everything, which leads to another wave,” Dr Qaisar Sajjad, secretary general of the Pakistan Medical Association, said.
“The vaccination rate is slow across the country, and we can face another wave in the first week of August, after Eid-ul-Azha,” he said, urging people to get vaccinated at the earliest to protect themselves from the virus.
On the other hand, the restaurants and hotel managements say they don’t have the capacity to check vaccination certificates of guests before serving them, demanding the government devise a mechanism for this.
“It’s good for our industry that the government has allowed indoor dining for vaccinated people, but how can we check and verify the vaccine certificates of individuals?” said Athar Sultan Chawla, convener of the All Pakistan Restaurants Association.
He said NCOC officials, in a meeting with the restaurants association last week, promised to provide a mobile app for each restaurant, hotel and wedding hall manager to check and verify vaccination certificates.
“We hope the NCOC will provide us with the promised app, otherwise we will not be able to do it on our own,” he said. “Apart from that, the provincial governments have yet to issue separate notifications for easing of the coronavirus restrictions.”
NCOC chief Asad Umar has already warned of a new Covid-19 wave in July if people fail to follow health guidelines like wearing face masks and getting shots.
The third Covid-19 wave set in in Pakistan in March, forcing the government to impose virus restrictions across the country. This led to a decline in infection rates by May, leading the NCOC to begin easing curbs from June 15.
The NCOC said in a statement earlier in the day that the country is going to receive three million doses of SinoVac vaccine from China on Tuesday through a procurement plan for June.
Pakistan has so far received 21.13 million doses of different types of vaccines, out of which over 17 million doses are procured on payment, the NCOC said. The government has also allocated $1.2 billion for further purchase of COVID-19 vaccines during the coming fiscal year.
