ISLAMABAD: While over 87 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been administered across the country, the National Com­mand and Operation Centre (NCOC) on Wednesday decided to approach unvaccinated people and convince them to get themselves vaccinated.

Main target will be the districts which are lagging behind others in terms of percentage of vaccinated population.

Meanwhile, it has been observed that the lowest number of Covid-19 cases was reported during the last three months and national positivity rate remained at 2.6 per cent.

In a statement, the NCOC said that it had devised a comprehensive plan with the collaboration of the National Database and Registration Authority and district administrations to target tehsils which were lagging behind others in terms of vaccination.

WHO recommends malaria vaccine for children

“By using the information technology, unvaccinated people will be traced and approached to convince them for vaccination. The goal is to ensure that maximum number of people are vaccinated at the earliest,” it stated.

The NCOC urged masses to get themselves vaccinated so that the country would return to normalcy.

An official of the Ministry of National Health Services, who is not authorised to speak on record, hoped that majority of people would not avoid vaccination if they were approached by district administrations and maybe by police at a later stage.

“It is psyche of the people that they immediately follow the instructions if they come to know that district administration and police are keeping an eye on them. It will help us increase the number of vaccinated people,” he said.

The data of the NCOC shows that over 62 million people have been partially vaccinated and over 31m fully vaccinated. A number of people were vaccinated out of the country and registered in Pakistan.

The NCOC data shared on Wednesday showed that 1,212 persons were infected and 39 died due to complications caused by infection in a single day.

Moreover, the number of active cases was 44,828 and 3,212 patients were admitted to hospitals across the country as of Oct 6.

Malaria vaccine

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recommended use of the RTS, S/AS01 malaria vaccine for children. The recommendation is based on results from an ongoing pilot programme in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi that has reached more than 800,000 children since 2019.

“This is a historic moment. The long-awaited malaria vaccine for children is a breakthrough for science, child health and malaria control,” said WHO director general Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “Using this vaccine on top of existing tools to prevent malaria could save tens of thousands of young lives each year.”

Published in Dawn, October 7th, 2021