Filmmaker Sangeeta has tested positive for coronavirus and has isolated herself at home in Lahore.
Parveen Rizvi known as Sangeeta confirmed that she has tested positive Friday morning and requested her fans to pray for her speedy recovery.
Earlier, actors Mahira Khan, Behroze Sabzwari, Neelam Muneer and Sanam Jung and her 4-year-old daughter also tested positive for the virus.
A survey done by the Institute for Public Opinion Research (IPOR) has revealed that majority of the respondents would prefer a China-made coronavirus vaccine over Pakistan, United States, Russia and others.
According to details, 1,500 participated in the survey between December 2 and 14 this year. It found that 35% of the respondents preferred China’s vaccine while 14% backed Pakistan and 9% chose the US. A government-approved vaccine got the green-stamp of 15% of the respondents while 16% did not give any answer.
The majority of respondents in the survey believe the virus to be a reality, while 25% said it doesn’t exist and termed it a global conspiracy.
Most of the participants said they would take the vaccine. Five in 10 said they would be willing to be administered the vaccine. Most of the respondents mentioned different conspiracy theories about the corona vaccine behind the reason for not going for the vaccine. In a previous survey, 67 percent of respondents were willing to administer the vaccine.
At least 77 per cent Pakistanis believe that the country is heading in the wrong direction, whereas 23 per cent think there’s nothing wrong with Pakistan, said a survey by research company IPSOS.
According to The News, the survey was conducted in the first week of December and over 1,000 people participated in it. “The findings were released on Tuesday for the last quarter (Q4) of 2020 and compared with people’s responses from the same period a year ago,” it added.
Last year, 21 per cent people believed that Pakistan was on the right track, while 79 per cent contested this view.
This year, 36 per cent said that their current personal financial situation was weak, while 51 per cent said it was neither strong nor weak, and 13 per cent said they were in a strong financial position.
In comparison with the results of the last year, the people are in a better financial position: the data showed that 38 per cent believed that their financial situation was weak, 5 per cent viewed it as strong, and 57 per cent said it was okayish.
Meanwhile, on province-wise assessment, the report found that a “poor financial situation” featured in almost all the provinces and inflation ranked number 1 among the list of top four contributors.
“In Sindh, the second-highest contributor was viewed to be unemployment (20 per cent), followed by COVID-19 (17per cent) and poverty (16 per cent). In Punjab, 23 per cent people felt the province’s poor financial situation was due to unemployment, 8 per cent thought it was due to COVID-19 and 14 per cent believed poverty played a key role,” the newspaper stated.
Meanwhile, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa about 18 per cent believed the poor financial situation was the result of unemployment, 12 per cent viewed coronavirus and 8 per cent felt it was poverty that was behind the province’s financial situation.
Similarly, in Balochistan about 25 per cent responded by blaming unemployment, a mere 2 per cent felt COVID-19 played a role, and 25 per cent felt it was poverty that has led to the province’s dismal state of financial affairs, said reports.
Mahira Khan has tested positive for COVID-19. In a social media update, actor said that it has been rough but will soon be okay.
“Please please wear a mask and follow all other SOPs – for your sake and others,” urged the actor.
She also asked fans to send her prayers and movie recommendations.
Earlier this week, Mahira had wrapped up the shoot for her upcoming film Neelofar in Lahore with Fawad Khan.
Meanwhile, Neelam Muneer also tested positive for COVID-19 a few days ago. The actor is doing okay and is currently in isolation.
Amid an increase in the number of coronavirus cases in the city, the district authorities have decided to impose “smart lockdowns” in 13 more areas of Lahore in a bid to contain the virus.
Meanwhile, Pakistan reported 71 deaths and 2,700 cases as the infections continue to peak across the country.
According to a notification issued by the Punjab Primary & Secondary Health Department, smart lockdowns with “controlled entry and exit points” have been imposed in several localities of the provincial capital.
Due to the lockdown, all types of gatherings, including social and religious ones, will be completely banned. On the other hand, medical services, pharmacies, laboratories, collection points, hospitals, and clinics will remain open 24 hours a day.
Shops selling essential items, including milk shops, meat shops, and bakeries will remain open from 7 am to 7 pm, as per the notification. The grocery stores, general stores, flour mills, fruits and vegetable shops, and petrol pumps will remain open from 9 am to 7 pm, it added.
According to the notification, smart lockdowns will be imposed in the following areas of Lahore due to a high number of COVID-19 positive cases.
Khucha Mission Das, Mian Wacho Wali Street, Rang Mehal; Street No 7, Androon Sheran Wala Gate; Street Adjacent to Fazal Sweets, Mochi Gate; Street Kosha Alam Yar, Androon Bhatti Gate; Main Street H No.100 near Butt Sweets, Chuhan Road, Islamia Park; Street 61, Almadad Pak Colony, Ravi Road; Tufail Street, Kila Lakshman, Ravi Road; St#3, Ravi Road, St#13 Kasur Para, Ravi Road; Main Street, Moh Khokhar Road, Badami Bagh; Street No 6, Data Nagar, Badami Bagh; St No7-A Siddiaqia Colony, Badami Bagh; St No 3, Mohalla Kachi Abadi, Iqbal Park, Badami Bagh.
Air pollution contaminates the air in Punjab and it shoots up in winter as farmers burn rice stalks left behind after harvesting to clear their fields to plant wheat.
During these cooler months, Lahore, which is surrounded by rice-growing districts, is covered with thick smog, putting people, especially the elderly and sick, at an increased risk.
“It is a health emergency – the air quality monitors in Lahore routinely show hazardous levels in November,” said Farah Rashid, a climate and energy program coordinator for green group WWF-Pakistan.
Now the Punjab government hopes to tackle the problem by providing 500 rice farmers around Lahore with a set of machines named ‘Happy Seeder’ that together eliminate the need to burn crop stubble.
The machines include a shredder that breaks down rice stubble and mulches it into the ground and a seed drill that follows to sow wheat through the mulch.
Malik Amin Aslam, climate change adviser to Prime Minister Imran Khan, called air pollution a “silent killer” and said Lahore’s smog had increased in intensity and frequency over the last five years.
He explained that rice farmers traditionally use combine harvesters to cut their rice in October, leaving behind about four inches of stubble.
With less than two weeks before they have to ready their fields to sow wheat, burning is the fastest way to clear the land, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In Pakistan, rice is grown on an area of about 2 million hectares (5 million acres), mainly in the Punjab and Sindh provinces. Many of the fields are cleared by burning every year.
In October and November, Lahore’s Air Quality Index level can jump to over 300, a number that the US Environmental Protection Agency says corresponds to a “health warning of emergency conditions.”
CUTTING EMISSIONS
Farmers say the new farm equipment can help combat smog but note that crop burning produces only a small share of the province’s pollution.
“The stubble is burned only for a few weeks in the winter. It is a fact that the problem becomes worse during this short period,” Bhandara said.
“But farmers are not the only reason for this pollution,” he added.
A 2018 report by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on the underlying causes of smog in Punjab noted that agriculture — mainly rice residue burning — accounts for 20 percent of total air pollutant emissions.
That puts it behind the industry, which produces a quarter of the air pollution in the province, and transport, which contributes more than 40 percent.
Tackling air pollution — and leaving stubble on the soil as mulch, rather than burning it — also has the benefit of reducing carbon emissions that contribute to climate change.
In India, where farmers have been using the rice stubble shredder and Happy Seeder for the past few years, a group of scientists published a report last year stating the technology could cut greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 78 percent.
CHOSEN BY LOTTERY
In Mandi Bahauddin district, where famed Basmati rice is grown, Muhammad Afzal, an agriculture officer at Punjab’s Government Agriculture Seed Farm, has been experimenting with the Happy Seeder for the past two years.
“Stubble management is a serious issue for farmers,” said Afzal, who helps farmers adopt new farming techniques.
Pakistan has penalties for rice stubble burning, including fines of up to Rs20,000 per acre — but most farmers have little other choice and simply continue the practice and pay the penalty when they are charged.
But a growing number are looking for alternative solutions, Afzal said.
The total cost for the stubble shredder and Happy Seeder is about Rs637,500 rupees, and the government this year is paying about 80 percent of the price for 500 farmers, he noted.
“For those who can’t afford it, bigger farmers are willing to rent out the machines. In the future, more service providers will come up to rent them out,” Afzal said.
One drawback to the machines, he noted, is the need to mount them on the back of a tractor — and not just any tractor will do.
“It requires a large, 85-horsepower tractor,” he noted, something most rice farmers in Pakistan do not have.
Bhandara, the farmer in Pakpattan, said the subsidised machines also are only available in certain districts around Lahore, in the so-called smog “red zone.”
“The subsidised machines should be made available to rice farmers in South Punjab and Sindh as well, otherwise they are too expensive for most farmers,” he said.
Despite the limitations, the Happy Seeder has proven so popular that the government has had 10 applicants for each of its 500 machines, according to Aslam, the climate change adviser.
He said authorities are using a lottery system to decide who gets the subsidised equipment.
The government has plans to expand the Happy Seeder program next year and cover the whole of the Punjab rice belt by 2023, Aslam noted.
In the meantime, he added, it is already working on a technology upgrade.
“The agriculture extension department has developed a prototype to combine the two shredder [and] seeder machines into one ‘Pak Seeder’, which will be even more effective and efficient” — plus 30 percent cheaper, he said.
At least six COVID-19 patients died after “criminal negligence” resulted in a delayed supply of oxygen to a hospital in Peshawar, prompting the provincial government to order an inquiry into the incident.
More than 200 patients — including nearly 100 with coronavirus — were left for hours with limited supplies of oxygen at government-run Khyber Teaching Hospital.
“The sad incident happened due to lack of central oxygen supply in the hospital,” provincial health minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra told a press conference, confirming the deaths.
“We will hold an inquiry and get to the bottom of the incident,” he added, promising action against those responsible “for this criminal negligence”.
Hospital spokesman Farhad Khan told AFP a disruption in oxygen supplies affected some 200 people, “including 96 COVID-19 patients”.
He blamed a private supplier, saying the Rawalpindi-based company had “failed to meet the growing demand”.
Pakistan has reported more than 400,000 cases of coronavirus — including over 8,000 deaths — since the virus arrived in late February.
Intensive care units in hospitals across the country are now almost full, with provincial governments struggling to deal with the soaring caseload.
Amid rumours that the military establishment has something to do with the deaths of radical cleric Khadim Hussain Rizvi, Peshawar High Court Chief Justice Waqar Seth, and accountability judge Arshad Malik, retired general Ghulam Mustafa said that the establishment doesn’t have anything to do with these deaths.
In a video posted on YouTube, he said it was concerning that people were paying heed to the ideas that were detrimental to Pakistan.
He said people should need to think before they go public with such ideas, urging the youth on social media not to go far in support of ideas for the sake of others. “This can come back to haunt you or your family,” the ex-general added.
Rizvi died the previous month a day after the TLP protesters and government reached an agreement following a day-long sit-in at Faizabad. The TLP wanted the government to take action against France, such as the boycott of products and the expulsion of its envoy, over blasphemous cartoons. His death had led to speculation that it may not be due to natural causes.
Last month, PHC CJ Waqar Seth also breathed his last due to COVID-19. The judge made headlines for his stern ruling wherein he said ex-general Pervez Musharraf must be hanged for subverting the constitution, and if he dies before his body should be hanged at D-Chowk for three days. The judge also struck down dozens of sentences awarded by the military courts on the basis of lack of evidence.
And Arshad Malik, the judge who sentenced ex-prime minister Nawaz Sharif in Al-Azizia reference, too died this week due to COVID-19. Last year, PML-N VP Maryam Nawaz along with top party leadership, held a press conference, wherein she said that Malik was coerced to give a verdict against Nawaz. She played a purported video of Malik to back her claims. The judge was subsequently dismissed, though he contested the veracity of videos.
Former Indian off-spinner Harbajahan Singh, in a recent tweet, wondered if India needs a coronavirus vaccine as its recovery rate is much better than the efficacy being provided by the drugs.
The cricketer took to Twitter to express his thoughts and even shared data of Pfizer and Biotech vaccine’s accuracy.
Soon after he posted his tweet, netizens began to roast him for posting ‘nonsense’ and advised him to not ‘post such tweets’.
Behroze Sabzwari is reportedly in the hospital after testing positive for COVID-19 last week.
According to reports, the veteran actor is currently under observation but is stable.
Speaking to a local media out, Sabzwari shared that he has been admitted in Ziauddin Hospital’s ICU, adding that he is doing fine.
Meanwhile, Behroze’s son Shahroz Sabzwari told media outlets that his father tested positive six days ago and has been at the hospital since.
Shahroze further added: “We are following the standard operating procedures and hoping things will get better soon. We’re all glad he is out danger now. But the initial days were tough, and we were all really worried. Now it’s all better and we hope it stays that way.”
Behroze is the latest celebrity to test positive for the virus. Other celebrities, who had earlier tested positive for COVID-19, include Usman Mukhtar, Ameer Gilani, Rubina Ashraf, Nida Yasir, Yasir Nawaz, Naveed Raza, Noman Sami, Alizeh Shah, Alyzeh Gabol, Abrar ul Haq, Sakina Samo, Shehzad Roy and Bilal Maqsood. All of them have recovered now.
It is pertinent to add here that Federal Minister for Law and Justice Barrister Farogh Naseem, PPP leader Sharmila Faruqi and her husband Hashaam have also tested positive for the virus, while across the border Sunny Deol has contracted the infectious disease.
Pakistan has reported 75 deaths in the last 24 hours by novel coronavirus as the number of positive cases has surged to 403,311 . The nationwide tally of fatalities has jumped to 8,166 on Wednesday.