ISLAMABAD: The government will start vaccinating frontline health workers next week while the general population in the age group of 65 and above will receive their shots from March.

“The system for vaccination is in place. Hundreds of vaccination centres in the country will be administering covid vaccine. Inshallah the vaccination of front line health workers will start next week,” Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar announced through a tweet on Wednesday.

People falling in the low-risk category of less than 50 years will be vaccinated in the second half of the current year.

Moreover, the National Command and Operation Centre decided to open universities and primary and middle schools from Feb 1. However, educational institutions in the four main cities — Karachi, Hyderabad, Lahore and Peshawar — will have to follow a pattern under which 50 per cent of the students will attend classes every alternate day.

Last week, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had announced that China would provide 500,000 doses of coronavirus vaccine to Pakistan by Jan 31.

An official of the Ministry of National Health Services, requesting not to be named, said: “As many as 400,000 frontline workers, who are in the top slot, have registered themselves and their vaccination will start in February. Citizens over the age of 65 years will be vaccinated in March while patients, suffering from chronic diseases and those over 50 years, will get the shots in the next phase. The population below 50 years and included in the low-risk category will get the vaccine in the second half of 2021,” the official said.

According to documents seen by Dawn, Pakistan’s vaccine strategy has been finalised and, once registration of different segments included in the priority list is anno­unced, people would have to send their computerised national identity card numbers to 1166 or through National Immunisa­tion Management System website to get themselves registered.

According to the data shared by the NCOC, 1,563 Covid-19 cases and 74 deaths were reported in a single day.

Published in Dawn, January 28th, 2021