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Pregnancy and birth are biological phenomena that carry heavy cultural overlays, and pregnant and birthing women need care and attention during both ordinary and extraordinary times. Most Pakistani pregnant women now go to doctors and hospitals for their perinatal care. Yet traditional community midwives, called DāĪ in the singular and Dāyūn in the plural, still attend 24% of all Pakistani births, primarily in rural areas. In this article, via data collected from 16 interviews-5 with Dāyūn and 11 with mothers, we explore a maternity care system in tension between the past and the present, the DāĪ and the doctor. We ask, what does the maternity care provided by the Dāyūn look like during times of normalcy, and how does it differ during COVID-19? We look at the roles the DāĪ has traditionally performed and how these roles have been changing, both in ordinary and in Covidian circumstances. Presenting the words of the Dāyūn we interviewed, all from Pakistan's Sindh Province, we demonstrate their practices and show that these have not changed during this present pandemic, as these Dāyūn , like many others in Sindh Province, do not believe that COVID-19 is real-or are at least suspect that it is not. To contextualize the Dāyūn, we also briefly present local mother's perceptions of the Dāyūn in their regions, which vary between extremely positive and extremely negative. Employing the theoretical frameworks of "authoritative knowledge" and of critical medical anthropology, we highlight the dominance of "modern" biomedicine over "traditional" healthcare systems and its effects on the Dāyūn and their roles within their communities. Positioning this article within Pakistan's national profile, we propose formally training and institutionalizing the Dāyūn in order to alleviate the overwhelming burdens that pandemics-present and future-place on this country's fragile maternity care system, to give mothers more-and more viable-options at all times, and to counterbalance the rising tide of biomedical hegemony over pregnancy and birth., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Ali, Sadique, Ali and Davis-Floyd.)

Infecting millions of people, causing around two million deaths, and affecting billions of people worldwide during January 2021, the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is not merely one pandemic but many. These many pandemics, which I identify herein, have revealed the overt and subtle entanglements among religion, science, and politics around COVID-19. Building on my current ethnographic research on COVID-19 using purposive sampling and interview guide in Pakistan, and borrowing from various anthropological concepts such as "social drama," proposed by Victor Turner, and ritual, I have developed a concept that I call rituals of containment . With this concept, I extend my previous argument regarding "symbolic ownership" to show a visible "body politics" by demonstrating how religion, science, and politics around COVID-19 are entangled at individual and government levels. This has become observable through the rituals of the Pakistani government of containment to deal with COVID-19. Such entanglements are visible in the case of strategies to tackle infected "viral bodies," as the government has enacted its authority: (1) to bury what I am terming the dead viral body without its beloved ones present; (2) to return or not to return this body to family members in a coffin; (3) or to provide the grieving family with a symbolic empty coffin. These Covidian politics have led to the question: Who in actuality owns the body? In conclusion, I argue that the problem lies in the discriminatory and contradictory rituals of containment of the government, not in using scientific evidence and guidelines., Competing Interests: The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Ali.)

Vaccination encounters multiple context-specific challenges-socio-cultural, economic, and political-that substantially affect its uptake. Likewise, natural disasters and health emergencies considerably impact immunization endeavors, such as the coronaviurs 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that has overwhelmed the entire world. It was already anticipated that the pandemic would severely affect Pakistan's vaccination programs due to interruptions in routine vaccination and the overstretching of healthcare systems. Consequently, there are anticipations of outbreaks of other vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs). Yet empirical evidence is missing. Drawing on qualitative research, this article focuses on the impact of COVID-19 on routine vaccination programs in Pakistan. Our data come from a small village located in Pakistan's Sindh province where local people refused the routine polio vaccine that was stopped for a while, then resumed in July 2020. They suspected both the vaccine and COVID-19 to be a "Western plot." We argue that these perceptions and practices can be seen against the backdrop of economic, socio-cultural, and (geo)political forces, which are encoded in "societal memory." Not only is there a need to reverse the significant impacts of COVID-19 on routine vaccination by arranging supplementary immunization activities (SIAs), but also the government must deal with other pressing issues that affect the vaccination programs in the country., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Ali, Sadique and Ali.)

Death is far from being simply a physiologic event; it is a complex phenomenon with sociocultural and politicoeconomic aspects. During extraordinary times such as the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, death becomes a contested site. I argue that the Pakistani government's dealings with the bodies of people who die from COVID-19 have shifted the meaning of a normal dead body to a viral body that poses particular challenges to cultures and people, including the government. This article is both autoethnographic and ethnographic. It concurrently draws on my observations and participation in death rituals in a Pakistani village in Sindh province as a member of that society, and on a recent experience that I faced after the death of a gentle lady of my acquaintance due to COVID-19. I also build on my previous long-term ethnographic research in Pakistan and my ongoing research on COVID-19 in that country. I discuss the death rituals and ceremonies performed during "ordinary" situations as background information; and the changes in these rituals that have resulted from the coronavirus pandemic. My data demonstrate significant differences between usual and customary death rituals and those performed during Covidian times by government mandate, which have severely and negatively affected people's mental health. I show the government's "symbolic ownership" of the viral body, in that the government can control how people deal with their viral dead ., Competing Interests: The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (Copyright © 2021 Ali.)