ISLAMABAD: Pakistan  Prime Minister Imran Khan has indicated that the government might go for complete lockdown in Covid-hit cities and emphasized the need for smooth supplies of food items during lockdown.

As per sources who told a leading international media, “the cabinet meeting, presided over by the Prime Minister, decided that Iran would be asked to export oxygen to Pakistan for Covid-19 patients on humanitarian basis by relaxing the ban the neighboring country had imposed on oxygen export due to the rising situation of Covid-19 it was facing.

The Pak PM has directed that food supplies should be improved if we go for complete lockdown, said federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry in a press conference after weekly cabinet meeting. He said the government had decided to supply 250 additional tonnes of oxygen to the hospitals through which 2,500 chronic coronavirus patients could be treated.

Keeping in view the Covid-19 catastrophe in India, the meeting also decided to increase local production of oxygen by 250 tonnes per day and reduce use of oxygen in some industries. On this, Minister for Industries Khusro Bakhtiyar is holding an important meeting on Wednesday with all stakeholders.

Meanwhile, a cabinet member, who did not want to be named, told Dawn that the government feared that it would have to impose complete lockdown if the intensity of spread of coronavirus increased by 14 percent and above.

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