LAHORE: Hundreds of people aspiring to go abroad queued up at Expo Centre for coronavirus vaccination on Monday.

The government had started to vaccinate those people who wanted to go abroad by establishing two vaccination centres in Lahore — Expo Centre and LDA Sports Complex. The vaccination centres would remain open for 24 hours.

Hundreds of people including students, labourers and business persons would be administered Moderna vaccine.

Earlier, Punjab Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid also tweeted that the government would give Pfizer vaccine to the people who had work permits to go abroad in Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East. “The aspirants would have to bring their work permit and other documents for vaccination,” she said.

The vaccination started on Monday and hundreds of people aspiring to go abroad approached the Expo Centre for vaccination. The people were seen making long queues.

One of the citizens said that they were waiting for their turn for the last two hours in the queue outside the Expo Centre.

He said people from other cities of the province also reached the centre and it resulted in rush.

Some other people said they had received one shot of Chinese vaccine - Sinovac and SinoPharm - but it was not acceptable in Saudi Arabia, America, England and other countries.

He said thousands of people were earlier administered Chinese vaccines and the government had not sorted out the problem.

He said now they could not take shots of the Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna because they were administered Chinese vaccines.

He said the Nadra was also unable to sort out their problem.

Published in Dawn, July 6th, 2021