Registrations for COVID-19 vaccine now open to Pakistan’s frontline healthcare workers

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), which manages the country’s coronavirus response, said on its website on Sunday it had opened registrations for frontline healthcare workers who are set to receive the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Pakistan’s virus cases crossed the grim milestone of 500,000 cases on Sunday and over 2,000 new infections have been reported every day since November. At least 10,644 people in Pakistan have died of the virus.
Staff in both public and private health facilities will be vaccinated, NCOC announced on its website and gave an elaborate definition for who qualified as a healthcare worker.
“All staff of COVID-19 hospitals (public and private sector) and isolation centers,” the NCOC notification said.
“All staff includes clerical, administrative and support staff (sanitary workers, guards) in addition to doctors, nurses, paramedics.”
The parliamentary health secretary told state-owned Radio Pakistan last week that Pakistan was expecting its first vaccine dose by the end of January, and that the government was preparing a database of frontline health workers who would be vaccinated for free.
On Tuesday, Pakistan’s federal cabinet gave approval to the health ministry to purchase COVID-19 vaccine doses on an emergency basis. The country is going to purchase 1.2 million doses from China’s Sinopharm.
Science and Technology Minister Fawad Chaudhry said in a series of tweets on Friday that the government was negotiating vaccine purchase deals with other companies as well, including Pfizer and AstraZeneca, and that in the coming months, more doses would be imported besides those from Sinopharm.