ISLAMABAD: The government opened up the coronavirus vaccination campaign to everyone aged 19 or older, Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar announced Wednesday, as targeted restrictions brought new daily infections down.
“In today’s NCOC [National Command and Operation Centre] meeting we decided to open up vaccination registration for all 19 years and above. This registration will start from tomorrow [Thursday],” the minister, who also heads the NCOC, said in a tweet.
In today’s NCOC meeting we decided to open up vaccination registration for all 19 years and above. This registration will start from tomorrow. So now registration will be open for the entire national population which is approved by health experts for covid vaccination
— Asad Umar (@Asad_Umar) May 26, 2021
“So now registration will be open for the entire national population which is approved by health experts for covid vaccination,” he added.
The government launched a nationwide vaccination drive, starting with older people and frontline healthcare workers, in March. The drive began with a focus on the oldest people in the community, generally over the age of 80, and worked its way down.
Battling a third peak of the virus, the Health Department began the campaign with Chinese Sinopharm and CanSino jabs.
Private hospitals in major cities are also using the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine that has been imported by a local pharmaceutical company.
Initially, the government 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.
The health authorities have administered 5.3 million vaccine doses with supplies from three Chinese companies — Sinopharm, Sinovac and CanSinbio — and the Oxford-AstraZeneca shots.
NEW CASES:
The nation has registered more than 900,000 coronavirus infections and some 20,465 deaths. On Wednesday, the total caseload of active Covid-19 cases reached 60,268 with 2,724 new infections and 4,686 recoveries in the last 24 hours.
65 people died of coronavirus-related complications on Tuesday, 58 of whom were under treatment in hospitals and seven elsewhere, the latest update issued by the National Command and Operation Centre said.
Most deaths occurred in Punjab, followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Of the deceased, 23 people under treatment on ventilators.
4,242 Covid-positive patients were under treatment in critical care units nationwide.
Meanwhile, the transmission rate was recorded at 4.61 percent on Tuesday. The ratio is the percentage of total positive samples detecting in every 100 tests.
According to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the positivity rate will be higher if the number of positive tests is higher, or if the number of total tests is critically low. A higher contagion rate suggests higher transmission of the disease.
The maximum number of ventilators were occupied in four major cities: Lahore 44 percent, Multan 69 percent, Bahawalpur 38 percent and Faisalabad 36 percent.
The maximum Oxygen beds (alternate oxygen providing facility other than ventilator administered as per the medical requirement of the patient) was also occupied in four cities: Gujranwala 45 percent, Swabi 44 percent, Peshawar 38 percent and Multan 57 percent.
Some 517 ventilators were occupied elsewhere in the country while no Covid-positive person was on a ventilator in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan.
59,076 tests were conducted nationwide on Tuesday, including 18,132 in Sindh, 25,245 in Punjab, 7,859 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 4,961 in Islamabad, 1,410 in Balochistan, 459 in GB, and 1,010 in AJK.
827,843 people have completely recovered from the disease, taking the recovery ratio to over 90 percent.
Since the pandemic outbreak, a total of 908,576 cases were detected, included the dead, recovered and under-treatment patients: 18,940 in AJK, 24,733 in Balochistan, 5,516 in GB, 80,662 in Islamabad, 130,644 in KP, 336,315 in Punjab and Sindh 311,766.
About 20,465 deaths have been recorded since the outbreak of the disease in February last year.
