Govt aiming to vaccinate enough people to avoid eid restrictions

Vaccination of people aged 18-29 from Thursday: minister

FEDERAL Minister for Planning, development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar on Monday stated that the government aims to vaccinate a large number of people through July so the country can avoid any restrictions during Eid-ul-adha.

Addressing a media briefing after a session of the National Coordination Committee, that minister said that seven million vaccines had been administered in Pakistan so far with 5.2 to 5.3 million people vaccinated. The eventual goal by the year’s end was to reach 70 million people, he added.

“According to our figures, more than 7 million vaccine doses have been administered and some 5.2 to 5.3 million people are included in this who have been vaccinated,” he said.

The federal minister said that the target by the year’s end was to inoculate 70 million people across Pakistan with a particular emphasis on achieving vaccination rates at a sufficiently high level in June and July so that strict and difficult restrictions would not be required before Eid-ul-adha as had been placed on Eid-ul-fitr.

He added that the federal government had arranged more than 10 million vaccines for this with much more to follow. “Just in the month of June we will have more than 10 million vaccines and then in July a further 10 million,” he said, adding that availability of vaccines had now been ensured despite it still being a issue in some countries.

“The NCOC has worked in coordination with the provinces and the provinces have considerably increased their capacity at vaccination centres,” said the federal minister, crediting it as the reason behind Pakistan’s inoculation boost from a few hundred at the start to 383,000 administrations the day before yesterday.

“We want to more than double this figure,” said Asad, while stressing the need to further increase vaccination capacity in the provinces and federal territories due to complaints regarding extended waiting times in some vaccination centres of urban centres.

Moreover, the government will begin inoculating people in the 18-29 age group from Thursday, Asad announced separately, after a decision to widen the gap between doses to inoculate more people faster was taken.

“With this step, the vaccination of all eligible age groups would be carried out. Please register as soon as possible,” he said in a tweet.

The government opened up the coronavirus vaccination campaign to everyone aged 19 or older last week.

The authorities initially had to deal with vaccination hesitancy and a shortage of vaccine supplies and had limited shots to people aged 30 or over.

But with purchases from China and allocations from the World Health Organisation and the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, the government has now secured more than 18 million doses and is keen to get them out into the population.

So far, government vaccines have been free, and private hospitals have been permitted to sell shots at uncapped prices.

Strict restrictive measures backed by vaccination have enabled a declining trend of the positivity rate as the country reported a rate below 5 percent for the seventh day on Sunday, the National Command and Operation Center said on Monday.

According to data released by the NCOC, the government agency leading the fight against the pandemic, the health authorities conducted 52,223 tests on Sunday nationwide, detecting 2,117 new coronavirus infections with a positivity rate of 4.05 percent.

In March and April, the nation witnessed a positivity ratio of over 11 percent several times, leading the government to impose strict measures, including the closure of educational institutions, markets, public parks, wedding halls, restaurants, public transport and all other venues of mass gatherings, especially during the Eid-ul-fitr holidays.

In May, the positivity rate dropped to over 9 percent and went down further to below 5 percent, the official data showed.

According to the NCOC, the total number of confirmed cases has risen to 921,053, including 841,241 recoveries, 59,033 active cases, and 20,779 deaths with 43 reported on Sunday. Pakistan has administered 6,130,509 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine till Sunday morning, including 287,109 doses administered across Pakistan in the last 24 hours, the NCOC said.

Asad COMPARES OUTBREAK IN PAKISTAN, INDIA: Asad, who also heads the NCOC, shared the mortality rate from the disease in India stood at 236 deaths per million people. “The death toll from corona in India is 236 casualties per million. In Pakistan, the ratio is 92 per million,” the minister tweeted.he said: “If India’s corona[virus] mortality ratio were the same as Pakistan’s, its death toll would be less than 200,000.” He then urged people to adopt precautions and get vaccinated.