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Handling Covid-19 as well as Pakistan would have saved US $10 trillion: Economist

'America's failure on Covid-19 is almost unimaginable'

Published: Mon 19 Oct 2020, 1:23 PM

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Former US treasury secretary, Lawrence 'Larry' Summers, lashed out at US President Donald Trump's failure on handling Covid-19 and said America could have saved trillions had it handled the pandemic as well as Pakistan.

The renowned economist cited Pakistan's efforts in tackling the outbreak while talking to CNN's, Fareed Zakaria, on Sunday, reported Dawn.

"America’s failure on Covid-19 is almost unimaginable. Heck, if the US had handled the pandemic as well as Pakistan, we would have saved in neighbourhood of $10 trillion," Summers said.

In a series of Tweets, Summers slammed the Trump government for their callous response to the pandemic which has claimed 200,000 lives in the US. 'The costs of an expanded testing system are trivial compared to the costs of tens of thousands of early deaths. Expanding testing should be a matter of utmost urgency', one of his tweets read.

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Last month, World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also praised Pakistan's response to the coronavirus and said the country managed to fight the pandemic while allowing its economy to pick up as the country stabilises.

In an op-ed in the British online newspaper The Independent, Tedros was quoted as saying, "Community health workers who have been trained to go door-to-door vaccinating children against polio have been redeployed and utilised for surveillance, contact tracing and care."

Tedros further stated that Pakistan's response reinforces "the lesson that the choice is not between controlling the virus or saving the economy; the two go hand-in-hand".



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