Introduction
Coronavirus Disease 2019
(COVID-19) is caused by Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2
(SARS-CoV-2). SARS-CoV-2 is a single stranded (SS), enveloped, positive
sensed, RNA beta β coronavirus (Raza et al., 2020) which is a close
relative of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV). It
shows poor resemblance with Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus
(MERS-CoV) (Wassenaar & Zou, 2020). Initially, disease was considered
as pneumonia of unknown etiology and was associated with commercial city
of South China, Wuhan (Decaro & Lorusso, 2020). Soon after the
investigations of Chinese authorities, it has been declared that it is
an outbreak of novel coronavirus (Zhu et al., 2020). It was a
3rd zoonotic outbreak of Coronavirus in the 21th
century after the SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV outbreaks (Gorbalenya et al.,
2020)(MacKenzie & Smith, 2020). According to the Centre of Disease
Control (CDC) SARS-CoV infected only 8089 individuals of several
countries with 774 deaths having 9.6% death rate (Navas-Martin &
Weiss, 2003), whereas, MERS-CoV infected 2494 people with 858 deaths
having 35.2% mortality rate. The outbreak remained confined to Saudi
Arabia (Alfaraj et al., 2019) (Ahmed, 2017). The recent SARS-CoV-2 has
much more transmission abilities than the previous coronaviruses
SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. It has paralyzed the entire globe by infecting 6
million people with 367166 deaths as per May 31, 2020 having 3.7%
mortality rate (Mehta et al., 2020). Facts clearly show about how much
SARS-CoV-2 is contagious. It also has higher transmission rates than
common flu which harbors 4.7% (Mehta et al., 2020). SARS-CoV-2 can be
transmitted through direct contact, aerosols, breathing, talking and
contact with contaminated electrical devices and surfaces (Prather et
al., 2020).
Fortunately, Pakistan remained safe from previous two outbreaks of
coronaviruses (SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV). First case of Coronavirus in
humans documented in Pakistan was confirmed by Ministry of health and
Government of Pakistan in February 26, 2020 in Karachi, which is most
populated city and considered as economic hub of Pakistan. On the same
day, another person tested positive (+) from Islamabad, the capital of
Pakistan (Culp, 2020). Initially, all the cases reported from Pakistan
had the travelling histories of Iran, UK, Syria, Italy and other
European countries (Waris et al., 2020). Recently, it is spreading very
fast by local human to human transmission into the entire country. As
per May 31, 2020 SARS-CoV-2 infected approximately seventy thousand
people with 1483 deaths in Pakistan. Government of Pakistan is trying
her level best to tackle this virus but lack of experience of health
professionals by Government, political instability and uneducated common
public are the significant barriers to fight against COVID-19.
Therefore, Pakistan is facing a very troublesome situation to make
suitable policies for the whole country (Javed et al., 2020). It is
suggested that people of Pakistan must change their living standards,
diet and social behaviors to defeat this terrifying virus. Government
has to formulate a revised policy for the whole country in order to
combat the disease. Presently, people of Pakistan are feared about their
future and a huge panic is created throughout the entire nation.