ISLAMABAD: The head of National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), Asad Umar, has announced that the registration of coronavirus vaccination for people aged 65 years and above will begin from next week.
Asad, who is also the minister for planning, development, reforms and special initiatives, took to Twitter on Wednesday and said that the vaccination of people, who register from next week for the coronavirus vaccination, will begin in March.
“Insha’Allah [we] will be opening up registration next week for Covid-19 vaccination for those 65 years and above. The vaccination of those who register in this category will start in March,” he tweeted.
Separately, Asad, while chairing a session of the NCOC to review the pandemic situation and ongoing vaccination drive, said that the National Immunisation Management System (NIMS) has spotted irregularities in the ongoing Covid-19 vaccination drive.
He added that the NCOC will ensure complete compliance of the vaccination guidelines and no tolerance will be made against those trying to bypass the NIMS and the Resource Management System.
“The provinces have completed the registration of frontline healthcare workers in order to maintain transparency and only registered healthcare officials will be administered vaccines,” he said.
According to the NCOC, the vaccination of frontline healthcare workers is underway across the country. The officials observed that the procedures for Covid-19 vaccination drive devised by the health authorities are not being fully implemented.
The prescribed procedures had been shared with the stakeholders prior to the launching of the vaccination campaign, however, violations were spotted by the authorities, the officials said, adding that the provinces have been instructed once again to fully implement the vaccination guidelines.
The statistics provided by the NCOC showed that around 27,228 healthcare workers, mostly in Sindh, have been administered Covid-19 vaccines across the country.
Meanwhile, the country has recorded 62 more coronavirus-related deaths in the past 24 hours, surging the overall death toll to 12,128, said the NCOC.
According to the latest statistics, Covid-19 caused 1,072 new infections in the past 24 hours, taking the national tally to 557,591. Some 1,797 patients were stated to be in critical condition.
In the past 24 hours, as many as 1,441 patients have recovered from the virus while 514,951 people have recovered from the deadly disease so far. The total count of active cases is 30,512.
A total of 31,713 tests were conducted across the country on Tuesday while 8,288,091 samples have been tested so far.
