Government sets target of vaccinating 70m people by end of 2021: NCOC

ISLAMABAD: The government has set a target of vaccinating 70 million people by the end of 2021, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) said.

The decision was taken in a meeting chaired by the NCOC Chairman, Asad Umar, here on Wednesday, while discussing, reviewing the current coronavirus situation and ongoing Covid-19 vaccination drive.

According to the NCOC released figures, Pakistan has vaccinated 7.95 million people so far, since the drive started across the country.

The NCOC data stated that as many as 305,093 Covid vaccine jabs have been administered on June 1. It added that the total tally of vaccine jabs administered in the country stands at 7,953,574.

The NCOC chief in a tweet said, “Held special NCOC session today (Wednesday with all major chambers in Pakistan. I want to thank the business leadership for willingness to participate in vaccination drive to help Govt accelerate the vaccination campaign and open up the economy while safeguarding health of the nation”.

The NCOC meeting took all the provinces into confidence to speed up the coronavirus vaccination drive for which the federal government will extend all necessary cooperation to the federating units.

The meeting requested the provinces to also engage private sector in Covid-19 vaccination drive including business community, religious scholars, and media in a bid to effectively carry out the vaccination drive.

Meanwhile, Pakistan in the past 24 hours reported 1,843 new Covid-19 infections, which is less than 2,000 cases for the second consecutive day, taking the national tally to 924,667.

The positivity ratio across the country was recorded at 3.9 percent, which shows that the country has reported below the five percent positivity rate for the past consecutive nine days, which is a significant achievement towards recovery.

According to the official data provided by the NCOC, about 47,183 tests were conducted during the past 24 hours out of which 1,843 returned positive.

The country reported 80 Covid-19 deaths during the past 24 hours, taking the national death toll to 20,930 across the country.

The country’s single-day COVID-19 daily death toll remains below 100 for the 12th consecutive day.

The number of active cases stands at 55,052, whereas, about 848,685 people have recovered from the virus so far.

According to the official portal, the total number of coronavirus patients in Sindh has reached 319,447, while 5,051 people have died so far.

The total number of COVID-19 patients in Punjab is 340,557 and 10,084 people have died so far due to the virus, while the total number of patients in Balochistan is 25,295, and the death toll has reached 282.

Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KPK) has recorded a total of 133,124 virus patients, with 4,095 deaths, while in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, 19,287 people have been infected with the virus and 548 people have died so far.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021