Mohammad Arshad
Al-Shifa Trust Eye Hospital has transformed its research center into a state-of-the-art research laboratory to gear up the fight against Covid-19 threatening masses, a senior doctor said Monday.
Final trials of the vaccine developed by a Chinese multinational are in progress after which it will be made available throughout Pakistan while the whole process will take a month, said Dr. Wajid Ali Khan, Chief of Medical Services, Al-Shifa Trust.
He said that the lab will enable us to respond to the current outbreak in a better way through treatments and countermeasures that can save millions of lives.
Dr. Wajid Ali Khan said that we would also be figuring out how the new infection spreads and how it infects as this information will be vital in order to accurately test new vaccines and drugs against the virus.
He added that this is the first time humans have encountered this particular virus which first emerged in December 2019 and rapidly evolved into a pandemic that is endangering humanity.
With the overwhelming numbers of patients the clinical laboratories are encountering enormous pressure therefore a better system is needed to rapidly and accurately diagnose the infected persons for quick response by the health workers, he added.
He said that strategies are urgently needed to educate masses and effectively detect the disease which satisfies patients for appropriate care to can prevent exacerbation of the disease.
He noted that reinfection has also become an issue and we will take this issue as a challenge to overcome this problem through finding ways for long-term immunity in people.
We don’t have the luxury of time, speeding up research has become a necessity to fight this disease which has transformed into a global crisis, he said, adding that we should be working overtime to combat the disease resulting in lockdown disruption hitting millions.
