By: AswathyP
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Monday informed a National Assembly session that the country’s COVID-19 testing capacity stands at 20,000.
A session of the National Assembly, summoned last week by President Dr Arif Alvi, is underway to debate Pakistan’s current coronavirus situation.
FM Qureshi informed the National Assembly that all political parties had earlier mutually decided to make decisions regarding the coronavirus lockdown in the National Coordination Committee’s (NCC) sessions.
Noting that the COVID-19 pandemic was an “unprecedented challenge” that has become one of the biggest catalysts after the World War II, Qureshi said health experts around the world were trying their level best to come up with strategies to curb the virus till a vaccine could be made.
“Irrespective of Pakistan’s response towards the virus, no country around the world was seen fully prepared to battle out the virus,” the federal minister said. “The world is learning with time.”
Presenting the global figures from the US, UK, and European countries, including Italy, he said Pakistan — being a developing country — showed a constructive response, with growing testing capacity, which now stood at 20,000 tests a day.
“Since the virus emerged, Pakistan had eight operational labs but now we have about 70 functional labs for the coronavirus. With improved testing capacity, we will get a clearer picture of the pandemic in the country,” he added.
Qureshi mentioned that to date, Pakistan had the highest testing capacity among all of the South Asian countries.
