Pakistan to approach Covax to start vaccination of children aged 5-11

Tariq Butt, Correspondent

Fixing the target for fully and partially vaccinated people till the end of March, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) has decided to approach Covax to start vaccination of children aged five to 11 years (numbering 43.7 million) against COVID-19.

Moreover, booster dose will be made mandatory in coming days by making it part of routine immunisation.

Meanwhile, 1,644 more infections and 33 deaths were reported in past 24 hours across the country. The national positivity rate was 3.29 per cent with 1,386 patients on critical care.

Officials said Covax will be approached for timely availability of vaccines for age group of 5-11 years.

Covax is an alliance that was set up by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI), Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and World Health Organisation in April 2020. It has pledged provision of free vaccines for 20pc of the population of around 190 countries, including Pakistan.

The country has already received a large number of consignments of different vaccines under the Covax arrangement. Moreover, a special session has been held with provinces for continuation of outreach campaign till the achievement of vaccination targets.

The booster dose will be made mandatory as part of routine immunisation during coming months. An outreach vaccination campaign will also be launched for vaccination of the remaining population from March 7-20.

Officials said that the NCOC has also fixed targets of fully and partially vaccinated people till March. It shows that 110m people - 72pc of vaccine-eligible people - should be fully vaccinated by the end of next month and 130m people - 85pc of vaccine-eligible population - need to be vaccinated in the same duration.

According to current data of the NCOC, 122,046,024 people have got at least one dose of vaccine out of which 94,523,444 are now fully vaccinated. Moreover, 3,815,280 persons have been inoculated with booster shots.

As many as 205,527,345 doses of seven vaccines - Sinopharm, Sinovac, PakVac or Cansino, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Sputnik - are being administered across the country.

Officials said that the vaccination of the 5-11 age group will be started after getting assurance from Covax that it will provide vaccine for the said age group.

"There are a large number of children (43.7m) in five-11 years age group. Although the age group is less affected, it has been observed that children become carrier of the disease and may infect elderly members of their families. So we want to vaccinate this age group to avoid chances of disease spread,” he said.