Claim: Pakistan has banned indoor dining to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic’s fifth wave.
Fact: On 19 January 2022, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) banned indoor gatherings, weddings, and dining, but only in districts and cities with a COVID-19 positivity rate over 10%.
Fact or Fiction?
On 21 January 2022, Facebook page FHM Pakistan shared a post claiming that indoor dining will be closed from 21 January.
The caption shared alongside the post reads:
“Indoor dining closes from tomorrow due to rapid increase in Covid cases.”
The news was also shared on Instagram by FHM Pakistan and People Magazine Pakistan.
Soch Fact Check found the headline to be misleading because it does not specify the circumstances in which a ban on indoor dining will be imposed, hence implying that it might apply to the whole country.
In its notification dated 19 January 2022, the NCOC mandated a ban on indoor dining in cities and districts with a positivity rate above 10%, starting from 24 January 2022. The notification stated that for cities and districts with a positivity rate under 10%, indoor dining will remain open for fully vaccinated people.
The NCOC later issued a revised order recommending the ban on indoor dining be imposed from January 21, instead of January 24.
Virality
Soch Fact Check ran a CrowdTangle analysis with the following search terms:
- Indoor dining ban Pakistan
- Pakistan closes indoor dining
The analysis revealed that over the past 30 days, the first search term has featured in 26 posts on Facebook, together amassing over 2,000 interactions.
The second search term mentioned above received 2,269 interactions across two posts on Instagram in the past 30 days.
FHM Pakistan and People Magazine Pakistan’s posts garnered 2,249 likes and 2,142 likes respectively. Both pages have large followings on Facebook, with 1.5 million followers and 1.3 million followers respectively.
Conclusion: The NCOC did not ban indoor dining across Pakistan but only in cities and districts with a positivity rate above 10% from 21 January 2022 in response to rising COVID-19 cases.