More Tanks than Ventilators expose misplaced Pak establishment priorities

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On March 30, Asfandiyar Mir, a University of Stanford based Post Doctoral fellow, posted these figures on Twitter comparing India and Pakistan with respect to their military balance as well as preparedness for pandemics and emergency response capacities. The data is given below:

The sources for this data come from Mir himself as well as open source data.

As of March 31, 2020, India had tested 27,688 individuals and has 1251 cases with 32 deaths. The country is on a complete lockdown as of March 23 till April 14th. India’s health data cited by Mir comes from Reuters investigative story “India probably has only around 100,000 intensive care unit (ICU) beds and 40,000 ventilators, said Dhruva Chaudhry, president of the Indian Society of Critical Care Medicine, based on industry estimates and other data.”

Pakistan’s numbers, as per government data, are 15,000 tests, with 2007 confirmed cases and 26 deaths. The country’s healthcare infrastructure as cited in The News “According to Lt Gen Afzal when the National Security Committee (NSC) convened its first meeting on the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) on March 13, Pakistan had a total of 700 ICU beds but today hospitals at the federal and provincial levels collectively have 19,670 beds. The capacity of quarantine facilities has also been reinforced — from 500 beds to 165,000. Additionally, 1,795 three- and four-star hotels with 42,000 rooms have been booked to accommodate confirmed patients, and another six five-star hotels have been identified for use as the fourth line of defence, should there be an exponential increase in numbers.”

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