PESHAWAR: The health department will start door-to-door vaccination campaign in five districts on Thursday (today) as seven more died of coronavirus in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Wednesday.

The province also recorded 399 new cases, taking toll of the positive people in the province to 142,799 since the advent of the pandemic, according to a report released by health department.

It said that of the confirmed patients, 135,687 (95 per cent), including 81 people registered during the last 24 hours, had already recovered from the virus whereas the tally of the active cases in the province was 2,677.

A total of 4,435 people have passed away due to the pandemic so far. The new deaths from the infection included two each in Peshawar, Abbottabad and Mardan and one in Kohat.

Peshawar, which is the epicentre of the infection since the beginning, diagnosed 173 more patients, Abbottabad 46, Kohat 28, Chitral Lower 26, Haripur 23, Chitral Upper 19, Nowshera 15, Dera Ismail Khan 13, Mardan 12 and Bannu 10. A total of 11,686 swabs were tested.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa records 399 new infection cases

Meanwhile, the health department is set to start door-to-door Covid-19 vaccination drive in five districts today (Thursday).

The department has directed the respective district health officers (DHOs) regarding the inoculation campaign while as many deputy directors have been tasked to supervise the effort.

The DHOs have been asked to ensure maximum coverage during the campaign will continue till August 10. They have been asked to engage medical technicians, lady health workers and other trained staff with the instructions to make appropriate arrangements in case of reaction.

Hospitals in the relevant districts have also been alerted to keep in touch with the Rescue 1122 in case of emergency to shift the recipients of the jabs in case of side-effects of the vaccine.

National Command and Operation Centre had last week asked all the provinces to start door-to-door campaign in the populous districts in view of the widespread case of Delta variant of the virus.

Officials in health department said that the vaccines were safe and very few mild reactions had been reported so far but precautionary measures were being put in place to ensure safety of the people.

“We have directed the DHOs concerned to ensure inoculation of at least 40 per cent population. The health staff will visit houses in the respective districts and will administer vaccine to people above 18 years of age,” they said.

Officials said that infectivity level of the virus was 11.5 per cent in Peshawar, 5.9 per cent in Mardan and 5 per cent in Nowshera. The province has overall 3.1 per cent case fatality rate (CFR). Mardan has 4.6 per cent, CFR, Abbottabad 4.4 per cent, Swat 4.3 per cent, Peshawar and Swabi has 4.1 per cent CFR.

They said that presently 555 coronavirus patients were admitted to different hospitals in the province including 23 on ventilators while others were on high and low flow oxygen.

“The province has already reported Indian, UK and South African variants of Covid-19 virus. These types of virus entail high rate of hospitalisation, infectivity and mortality.

Therefore, door-to-door vaccination is very important to scale up public immunity against the virus,” said officials. They added that about 3.1 million people were vaccinated against the target of 19 million so far.

They said that religious scholars and community leaders would also be taken on board to create demand for vaccination and make sure that the target population received jabs in the fulfillment of the recommendation of NCOC.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2021