Army Takes Over Distribution Of PPEs After Irregularities By Provincial Govts

National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) Chairman Lieutenant General Muhammad Afzal has said that Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) is being distributed among the doctors and health workers across the country through respective corps headquarters of the Pakistan Army after the authority received several complaints that vulnerable doctors were not receiving the dispatched-protective gear.

The NDMA chairman, in his recent press conference, said that the decision was then made to send the PPEs directly to the relevant Army Corps Headquarters rather sharing them with the provincial governments. However, the information regarding the dispatching of PPEs was duly shared with the provincial governments. "Now the army is distributing the protective gear in the hospitals, and since then we have not received any complaint,” he said.

Lt Gen was of the opinion that the lockdown imposed to counter the deadly coronavirus outbreak should have been made 'flexible' from day one. “The virus will spread anyway and the cases will increase. Imposing lockdown wouldn’t stop it.”

The deadly coronavirus has claimed 896 lives in Pakistan, while 11,922 patients have recovered successfully and have been discharged from the hospitals.

The national tally of coronavirus confirmed cases has risen to 41,363, with the provincial governments of Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan confirming 14,584, 16,377, 6,061, 2,692 cases respectively. Meanwhile, 540 cases in Gilgit-Baltistan, 997 in Islamabad, and 112 in Kashmir have been reported to date.