PESHAWAR: Five more people died of coronavirus and 189 new cases were detected in the province as the health department started administering locally produced Covid-19 vaccine PakVac to people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Thursday.

“On the first day, 270 people got inoculated with Pakvac, which is a single dose medicine. Initially, we have received 5,000 doses of the vaccine produced at National Institute of Health Islamabad with the help of China,” officials told this scribe. They said that NCOC supplied PakVac to all the provinces on the basis of their population.

Pakistan has manufactured 118,000 doses of PakVac as first batch, which have been supplied to all provinces on the basis of their population.

Officials said that it would speed up vaccination process in the province because its one dose provided protection to the recipients against the pandemic. So far, the province has been using Sinopharm, Sinovac, AstraZeneca and CanSino while a limited quantity of Pfizer has also been procured which is being given to the people with chronic ailments on the recommendation of medical specialists.

Five more people die of virus in the province

“So far, we have vaccinated 1.5 million people in the province. Yesterday, 67,000 people were vaccinated in different centres of the province. Vaccine hesitancy is decreasing,” they said. In Peshawar, the high-burdened Covid-19 district, 380,000 persons have been given the jabs.

Meanwhile, a health department report said that Covid-19 mortalities in the province reached 4,252 and incidence 136,663 since the onset of the infection. Of the infected persons, 129,134 (94 per cent) have already recovered from the ailment.

The report said that 319 more patients recovered during the last 24 hours. There are 2,958 Covid-19 active cases in the province, mostly in Peshawar, which accounts for about 50 per cent of Covid-19 deaths and cases. A total of 9,612 tests were conducted.

Of the new fatalities, one each belonged to Peshawar, Swat, Malakand, Kohat and Bannu while Peshawar recorded 47 most cases followed by by Abbottabad with 25 in the province. The number of hospitalisations due to Covid-19 has also been declining as there are total 597 confirmed cases in the hospitals including 245 on low flow oxygen, 320 on high flow and 19 on ventilators.

Positivity level of Covid-19 swabs remained below five per cent in all districts, except Abbottabad that recorded 8.4 per cent positivity. In Peshawar, positivity remained 3.9 per cent, in Mardan 3 per cent and in Nowshera 1.5 per cent.

Published in Dawn, June 18th, 2021