The coronavirus pandemic has reached nearly every nation with confirmed cases exceeding 5.2 million and 334,996 recorded deaths in the global tally.
To date, Pakistan has reported 55,667 cases with 1,155 fatalities. Compared to the rest of the world, the numbers are low, as the country is currently in 19th position in terms of the number of reported cases. Top of the list is the United States of America with 1,621,333 cases, followed by Russia and Brazil with 326,448 cases, and the United Kingdom with more than 250,000 cases in Europe.
Despite having far fewer cases than other countries, however, our nation’s fast-growing numbers are still, no doubt, a cause for great concern. Reliable information from authorities is becoming increasingly important in these difficult times and yet it is becoming harder to find with each new report, leading us to believe that unreliable stats are being used by the authorities.
For example, the NHSR & C Ministry appears to understate heavily the number of cases COVID-19 in Islamabad. On 9 May, their report reports only one case in the Shehzad Town district, while in the same region, a different report from an unconfirmed source report confirmed more than 26 cases.
There are only 7 cases in all of I-8, according to the Ministry, whereas the comparative report shows more than 56 people with another 43 suspected in that region. The same can be said in the ministry ‘s report for every other region.
With such vastly different figures, there is reason to assume that in fact some, if not all authorities, record unconfirmed numbers and the figures are inaccurate. Data coordination between departments does not seem to exist which only deems the reports untrustworthy.
Not to mention the “unknown locations” in some of the reports, which seems ridiculous considering that only 2-3 years ago a census was conducted that should contain information about the location of each Pakistani citizen in the database.
In such a scenario, the government should establish a single department that coordinates with different hospitals and paramedics to report actual numbers instead of multiple departments or ministries reporting different numbers which only leads to confusion.
It ‘s vital to get a handle on the actual number of cases of coronavirus in the country and misreporting/underreporting the cases will only cause problems down the line.
