-Entry of unvaccinated people will be banned to restaurants, shopping malls,
marriage halls
-Vaccination also made compulsory for staff members of
educational institutes
-Vaccination of children aged 12 and above allowed
By Uzma Zafar
ISLAMABAD: The National Command and Operation Centre on Tuesday announced several restrictions for unvaccinated citizens, as the government seeks to ramp up inoculations to beat the coronavirus pandemic.
NCOC, the forum that heads Pakistan’s COVID-19 response, said that the restrictions on unvaccinated people would be applicable from October, so only two days remain for people to get their coronavirus shots.
Without being vaccinated: You cannot enter restaurants; You cannot enter marriage halls; You cannot enter shopping malls; You will not be allowed to travel abroad or domestically; You cannot be part of an educational institute’s staff.
The development follows NCOC deciding to vaccinate children aged 12 years old and above. In a tweet, NCOC chief Asad Umar announced that the decision had been taken during an NCOC’s Tuesday’s meeting.
“Special drive will be run for vaccination at schools to make it easier for children to be vaccinated,” he tweeted.
Later, the NCOC, in a tweet, said that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine would be administered to children above 12 years.
According to the NCOC website, Pakistan has so far administered 79.5 million vaccine doses, 57.8 million first doses and 27.3 million second doses. The government had allowed citizens above the age of 17 to get vaccinated from Sept 1.
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan, during a press conference, had announced that these adolescents would have to be fully vaccinated by Oct 15 in order to enter educational institutions. Shortly after, the government had decided to start vaccinating adolescents in the age group of 15 to 17 years.
Earlier this month, the NCOC had revised its Covid-19 vaccination guidelines for citizens below the age of 18 and said that they will be administered the Pfizer vaccine. People below the age of 18 will have to provide their B-form number for registration in the National Immunisation Management System, the NCOC statement had said.
According to latest statistics shared by NCOC on Tuesday showed; Pakistan reported 1,400 coronavirus cases over the last 24 hours, the lowest since July 5, when 830 infections were detected in the country.
The highest number of new cases were reported from Punjab at 574, followed by 535 in Sindh and 143 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The total number of cases is 1,241,825, and the positivity rate is 3.1 per cent. Meanwhile, 41 more coronavirus-related fatalities have taken the death toll to 27,638.
