Federal Minister of Economic Affairs Hammad Azhar says hunger is as much a threat to Pakistan as the coronavirus itself.

"Ours is not a western developed country where people can sit home and eat. We have to balance hunger and poverty with the virus," he said in the National Assembly.

Citing experts, he said that if the government continued with the lockdown, 20 million people would go below the poverty line "in the best-case scenario".

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