Inside the Walled City of Peshawar, the streets are empty, and the markets closed. But along the intricate pathway of the bazaar, there is a flurry of plastic stools outside every shop and faint whispers of chatter can be heard from behind the shutters.

In the midst of it all, a man is seen standing outside a shoe shop with two women. A few seconds later, another bearded man, seated atop one of those plastic stools in an adjacent alley, briefly opens up the shutter of the shoe shop, just high enough to let the trio enter.

Before the scene could be registered, the street is empty once again. The silent muttering continues in the background.

German virologist Chrisitan Drosten aptly summed up the lockdown when he stated that “there is no glory in prevention” - in other words, most people do not appreciate the strict measures adopted to curtail the spread of Covid-19.

The stakes, however, are higher now as Pakistan reported its highest single-day death toll of 201 on April 28 - the same month, with over 3,000 deaths, also turned out to be the deadliest since the pandemic hit the country.

With Pakistan consistently recording a positivity rate of nearly 10 percent, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) decided to lock down the country for a week during the Eid holidays to prevent the festive occasion from becoming a Super Spreader Event (SSE).

While the district administration, aided by the police, has tried to enforce the lockdown and strict compliance with the SOPs, the citizens have been innovative in non-compliance.

“We have held several meetings with the traders to address their concerns,” Abbas Ahsan, the Peshawar Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) tells The News of Sunday. “They agreed on compliance.”

Despite successful negotiations, the traders held a protest against the lockdown, decrying the monetary loss incurred during the pandemic.

“Some of the businesses that thrive on local and religious festivals will go bankrupt,” says Javed Ali, a local businessman and a leader of the traders’ union.

He refused to comment on shopkeepers keeping shops open despite lockdown.

“They will update my software if I say a word,” he quotes a locally-coined phrase for coercive measures adopted by the government against those indulging in anti-vaccination propaganda, and more generally, SOP compliance.

A year into the pandemic, the fact remains that most deny the existence of the novel coronavirus while others harbour superiority complexes based on the whimsical assumption that Pakistanis are “naturally immune to the virus”.

“They will update my software if I say a word,” Javed Ali quotes a locally-coined phrase for coercive measures adopted by the government against those indulging in anti-vaccination propaganda, and more generally, SOP compliance.

Then there are some who have gone a step ahead.

In Peshawar’s upscale neighbourhood on Nasser Bagh Road, customers can be seen rummaging through the shelves of a superstore. It’s later than 6:00 pm, the time specified for the closure of markets when a young boy enters the street on a motorbike and yells “Assistant Commissioner (AC) sahib is on his way”.

The announcement ushers in an organised chaos in the superstore with the customers being asked to tag their grocery bags with their phone numbers. Within minutes, the shop is closed.

As the AC sahib’s envoy makes his way out of the area, the long queues emerge out of nowhere.

The young boy has a special job - he has been hired specially to inform the shopkeepers of authorities’ random checks in time for evasive action.

While a small group of people shopping together may seem benign compared to a large gathering, there is enough epidemiological evidence to establish that even small gatherings are risky if the people come from varied backgrounds or “different exposure profiles”.

It has now been established through several studies that a majority of the secondary attacks of Covid-19 are during the incubation period with the primary contact, which means that people who come in contact with a Covid-positive person transport the virus before their own symptoms appear. One can only imagine the scale of transmission with collective small-scale movements where most of these meetings are taking place in closed spaces with hardly any ventilation and perhaps no consideration for social distancing or wearing a mask.

If we keep last year in mind, one guest at a hotel was the index case for four national and international clusters in Hong Kong. In Pakistan, one woman who attended a marriage was an index case for more than 70 infections.

“We’ve deployed the district security branch (DSB) to gather intelligence about such tactics, so far the reports have come in from only one police station out of 33,” says Ahsan.

If the stats can be taken as an indicator of compliance, there have been 6,522 cases registered against 16,734 people. Rs 23,291,800 have been collected in fines.

An analysis of data from three countries found that delaying Covid control measures by just a week could triple the impact of the pandemic. While the district administration is quite confident about its “fool-proof” measures the true effectiveness of the lockdown will only become clear seen two weeks after Eid.

The author is a former editor, and now a   freelance journalist