COVID‐19 pandemic control and administrative issues in Pakistan: How Pakistan mitigated both pandemic and administration issues?

• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Author: Muhammad Ahsan Ali Raza,Chen Yan,Hafiz Syed Mohsin Abbas,Atta Ullah
• Date: 01 December 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2760

RESEARCH ARTICLE

COVID-19 pandemic control and administrative issues

in Pakistan: How Pakistan mitigated both pandemic

and administration issues?

Muhammad Ahsan Ali Raza

1

| Chen Yan

1

| Hafiz Syed Mohsin Abbas

2

|

Atta Ullah

3

1

School of Economics and Management,

Beijing University of Posts and

Telecommunications, Beijing, China

2

College of Public Administration, Huazhong

University of Science and Technology (HUST)

Main Campus, Wuhan, China

3

School of Management, Huazhong University

of Science and Technology (HUST) Main

Campus, Wuhan, China

Correspondence

Hafiz Syed Mohsin Abbas, College of Public

Administration, Huazhong University of

Science and Technology (HUST) Main Campus,

Wuhan, China.

Email: abbas_hsm@hust.edu.cn;mohsin01@

163.com

COVID-19 is wreaking havoc all around the globe, and Pakistan bears no exception.

This study explores Pakistan's response toward controlling COVID-19 Pandemic from

the day the 1st case was reported, February 26, 2020, in Pakistan until August

31, 2020. It explores the administrative conflicts among federal and provincial gov-

ernments and political behaviors of political parties toward the COVID-19 pandemic

by referring Government Response Index. By applying the ARDL model approach,

results show that since the administrative harmony had been implemented in

Pakistan in July 2020, its positive impact on combating the COVID-19 situation in

Pakistan and substantial improvement in recovered cases and a downward trend new

confirmed and fatal cases has observed in Pakistan. The findings demonstrate that

administrative efforts scattered due to internal conflicts from February to mid-July

2020 have ended, and collective aggressive policy enforcement has been mitigating

the adverse impact of COVID-19 in Pakistan since July to date. However, sustainable

measures and prudent policy implications are needed to combat the ongoing COVID-

19 pandemic and future calamities.

KEYWORDS

administrative conflicts, ADRL, COVID-19 pandemic, government of Pakistan, government

response index, policy implementation

1|INTRODUCTION

When nations were welcoming 2020, an uninvited and unexpected

calamity called COVID-19 also appeared. A group of coronaviruses

spread like a pandemic and engulfed the entire world in no time

(Abbas, Xu, Sun, Ullah, et al., 2021a; Shim et al., 2020). Expecting that

developing countries ought to face this pandemic's wrath the most,

the actual situation was quite the opposite. Since this pandemic

outbreak from Wuhan City of China on December 27, 2019, till

today, China's fight against this problem was remarkable and apprecia-

ble. On the other hand, developed countries like United States,

United Kingdom, Italy, France, and Spain have collapsed utterly in

battlingagainst this pandemic socially,economically, and psychologically

(Mamun & Ullah, 2020; Moghanibashi-Mansourieh, 2020). Moreover,

along with economic and social, world has also been facing climatic,

energy shortage and developmentissues since the COVID-19outbreak

(Hoang et al., 2021;Leetal.,2020; Nguyen et al., 2021;Ullah,Pinglu,

Ullah, & Elahi,2021). The COVID-19 cases' situationis somehow better

in developing countries; however, governance and response system

issues rippedthose countries to exposure, making the problem worse.

COVID-19 is wreaking havoc all around the globe, and Pakistan

bears no exception. Pakistan is a developing country with a lower-

middle-income category than the World Bank database (World

Bank, 2020). However, since its inception, Pakistan has been facing

economic deprivation, health, and socio-economic crisis precisely

(Aslam, 2020). Aged 73 years, Pakistan did not have much significant

Received: 5 February 2021 Revised: 28 August 2021 Accepted: 31 August 2021

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2760

J Public Affairs. 2022;22(Suppl. 1):e2760. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1of14

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2760