UK not ready to exclude Pakistan from Red List

Ibn-e-Ameer

Islamabad: United Kingdom (UK) has raised questions over the facilities of Pakistan’s testing system of Covid-19, making it difficult to exclude Pakistan from the red list.

However, Pakistan has not expressed satisfaction over this response.

Now, Pakistan will discuss with experts of U over facilities of Pakistan testing system, enabling UK government to take a decision of excluding Pakistan from the red list.

The UK has not put even India on the red list where the rate of the Covid pandemic was high.

Briefing on the efforts to remove Pakistan from the UK red list, the special assistant to the Prime Minister on National Health Services, Regulation informed about his meeting with the British High Commissioner.

The UK has cited the main reason that Pakistan’s testing and sequencing rates are relatively low which made it difficult to know the full genomic makeup of the current wave.

However, Pakistan says that this is not a plausible explanation as countries much more badly affected like India was on the amber list.

He informed that the Pakistani team would now discuss the matter in detail with UK’s medical experts in few days.

Advisor also briefed the cabinet on the tepid response of SOEs with regard to the decision of cabinet pertaining to raising of mobile vaccination teams (MVTs) through their CSR funds.

The cabinet secretary informed that he had written a letter to the concerned secretaries of the divisions that administratively control these SOEs, urging them to personally oversee the compliance of the directions of the cabinet.

He had also been directed to submit a report in this regard.

Secretary cabinet said that he had received a response from secretaries wherein they had cited the lack of demand for the mobile vaccination facility by the public as the main reason for not fully implementing the decision of the cabinet.

The cabinet directed the cabinet secretary to follow up with the concerned secretaries to complete the tasks assigned by NCOC in entirely and submit a progress report.