Islamabad, Jul 29 (PTI) Pakistan's top anti-coronavirus official said on Thursday that enforcing smart lockdown and not closing down entire cities was the solution to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

Asad Umar, the chief of Nation Command and Operation Center (NCOC), spoke with the reporters after heading an important meeting of the NCOC during which it was decided that individuals employed or involved in high-risk sectors must get vaccinated by August 31.

They include students above 18 years, workers of the transport sector, public sector employees, law enforcement agencies, and staff at hotels, restaurants, wedding halls, shopping malls and banks.

For teachers, the deadline for vaccination was August 1 to continue working at educational institutions. Also, domestic travel will be banned for non-vaccinated people from next month.

"Closing down entire cities for weeks is not the solution. We realised that the working class, the labourers have to pay the price for this,” said Umar, who is also minister for planning,

Instead, implementation of the SoPs and enforcing smart lockdown to close down the hotspots was Pakistan's tried-and-tested strategy because it was based on data and experience, he said.

“We have seen success with this [strategy] time and again. In Ramadan, we worked on SoP enforcement on a huge scale and saw an improvement in the spread of the disease,” he said.

The new measures were announced as Pakistan recorded 76 coronavirus-related deaths in the past 24 hours, taking the toll to 23,209. Also, 4,497 new cases were reported in this period, taking the national tally of confirmed cases to 1,020,324.

Umar said the current compliance of the SoPs in capital Islamabad was 56.4 per cent, followed by 46.6 per cent in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 42.7 per cent in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, 37.4 per cent in Gilgit-Baltistan and 38 per cent in Punjab and 33 per cent in each Sindh and Balochistan.

He blamed people for ignoring the SoPs by thinking that the threat was over, which resulted in the resurgence of the pandemic.

Pakistan has been facing the fourth wave of the coronavirus driven by the Delta variant. The government has been stressing on the importance of SoPs and vaccination.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)