WASHINGTON – Former US treasury secretary Lawrence H Summers has praised Pakistan’s coronavirus strategy, criticizing President Donald Trump’s response towards the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking to CNN on the show “Fareed Zakaria GPS”, Summer said: “Heck, if the US had handled the pandemic as well as Pakistan, we would have saved in neighborhood of $10 trillion.”
Told @FareedZakaria on GPS @CNN, America’s failure on COVID-19 is almost unimaginable. Heck, if the U.S. had handled the pandemic as well as Pakistan, we would have saved in neighborhood of $10 trillion.
— Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) October 18, 2020
The academic, who served as Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton and the Director of the NEC for President Obama, added that 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,” he said while commenting on the US coronavirus strategy.
So far, the US has recorded more than 8.35 million cases, 224,389 deaths, and over five million recoveries from the coronavirus.
While the US remains the most hit country in the world, Pakistan’s COVID19 caseload seems to have peaked three months ago. Its daily total of new cases has remained in the mere hundreds since early August.
A total of 307,069 people have recovered from the virus. There are now 9,296 active cases in the South Asian country.
Pakistan handled COVID-19 better than India, Tharoor censures Modi at LLF
Last month, World Health Organization (WHO) chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus praised Pakistan’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and supported Prime Minister Imran Khan’s policy to balance life and livelihood as the country combatted the disease.
