Pakistan specific COVID-19 overview and recommendations

Abstract

Soon after its emergence in Wuhan, China in late December, the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) spread rapidly to the other parts of the world and acquired a pandemic status. Pakistan reported its first case of SARS-CoV-2 on February 26, 2020, in Karachi. Since then, a higher prevalence of COVID-19 was reported from almost all major cities of Pakistan. Owing to the high rate of COVID-19, Pakistan enforced a lockdown across the whole country on March 24, 2020. This lockdown controlled the SARS-CoV-2 successfully; however, severe economic losses were observed in the lockdown Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) guidelines. We, therefore, proposed an alternative plan termed as "regulated reverse lockdown" which will help decrease the burden of COVID-19 without having a negative effect on the economy. The present editorial will address the potential flaws in the already imposed lockdown and will propose an alternative plan to make the lockdown more effective in terms of COVID-19 prevalence and economic growth of Pakistan.