ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani doctor who became the first person in the country to officially receive the COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday has cautioned people to keep wearing masks and maintain social distance even after getting vaccinated.
Pakistan launched its COVID-19 vaccination program across the country on Wednesday, with health care staff the first to receive shots of the Sinopharm vaccine donated by neighboring China.
At a ceremony witnessed by Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday, Dr. Imran Sikander became the first person in the country to officially receive a dose of the vaccine.
Around 182 doctors and 30 paramedics have lost their lives to the virus, according to the Pakistan Medical Association.
“Do not get over excited after getting the vaccine, that you are immune,” Sikander, an anaesthetist and critical care specialist at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad, told Arab News in an interview on Thursday. “No, still there is a 16 percent chance of getting infected. The best thing is a combination of getting vaccinated, using masks and keeping social distance.”
The South Asian country of 220 million managed to contain the number of coronavirus cases early in the pandemic, but is now fighting a second wave, recording 551,842 total cases, with 11,886 deaths on Friday.
This Monday, Pakistan received 500,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for free from China and is expecting to get additional doses before the current supply runs out. The government has said it is in touch with vaccine manufacturers around the world as the country requires at least 73 million more doses to vaccinate its eligible population of 100 million above the age of 18.
The government will get 17 million doses from Covax — a WHO-led initiative that aims to ensure equitable vaccine supply to developing countries — before June 30. The supply will begin by the end of this month, the government’s health adviser told reporters this week.
The government plans to vaccinate 0.5 million health care workers in the first phase of its campaign in the next three weeks, with 578 adult vaccine centers established across the country with a daily capacity to handle 40,000 people.
“The only protection [against the virus] is vaccines,” Sikander said. “I request the people of Pakistan to go for vaccination without any hesitation, and keep wearing masks.”
He said he had not developed any side effects to the vaccine so far and felt “comfortable.”
Sikander was selected as the first person to get the vaccine, he said, because he was particularly vulnerable to the virus as the head of a team at the PIMS hospital that looked after critical COVID-19 patients.
“I have been in direct contact with patients very frequently, so that’s why I was selected as the first person,” the doctor said. “This is quite a proud moment for me. I wanted to make an example for other health care workers and colleagues, and that’s why I accepted their [the government’s] offer to get the first jab.”
But he said despite decades of being a doctor and treating critical patients, he had never seen anything “worse” than the coronavirus.
“I have been dealing with so many other critical illnesses, but this [COVID-19] gives you a lot of depression,” Sikander said, “because mortality is very high, and a lot of people die during the course of their treatment.”
Keep wearing masks, cautions doctor who was first Pakistani to get COVID-19 vaccine
https://arab.news/58z7u
Keep wearing masks, cautions doctor who was first Pakistani to get COVID-19 vaccine
- Dr. Imran Sikander heads a team at Islamabad’s PIMS hospital that looks after coronavirus patients in critical condition
- Pakistan launched its vaccination drive on Wednesday with health care staff the first to receive shots of China’s Sinopharm vaccine
Pakistani politicians urge dialogue with Imran Khan’s party as PM offers talks
- National Dialogue Committee group organizes summit attended by prominent lawyers, politicians and journalists in Islamabad
- Participants urge government to lift alleged ban on political activities and media restrictions, form committee for negotiations
ISLAMABAD: Participants of a meeting featuring prominent politicians, lawyers and civil society members on Wednesday urged the government to initiate talks with former prime minister Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, lift alleged bans on political activities after Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif recently invited the PTI for talks.
The summit was organized by the National Dialogue Committee (NDC), a political group formed last month by former PTI members Chaudhry Fawad Husain, ex-Sindh governor Imran Ismail and Mehmood Moulvi. The NDC has called for efforts to ease political tensions in the country and facilitate dialogue between the government and Khan’s party.
The development takes place amid rising tensions between the PTI and Pakistan’s military and government. Khan, who remains in jail on a slew of charges he says are politically motivated, blames the military and the government for colluding to keep him away from power by rigging the 2024 general election and implicating him in false cases. Both deny his allegations.
Since Khan was ousted in a parliamentary vote in April 2022, the PTI has complained of a widespread state crackdown, while Khan and his senior party colleagues have been embroiled in dozens of legal cases. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif last month invited the PTI for talks during a meeting of the federal cabinet, saying harmony among political forces was essential for the country’s progress.
“The prime objective of the dialogue is that we want to bring the political temperatures down,” Ismail told Arab News after the conference concluded.
“At the moment, the heat is so much that people— especially in politics— they do not want to sit across the table and discuss the pertaining issues of Pakistan which is blocking the way for investment.”
Former prime minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, who heads the Awaam Pakistan political party, attended the summit along with Jamaat-e-Islami senior leader Liaquat Baloch, Muttahida Quami Movement-Pakistan’s Waseem Akhtar and Haroon Ur Rashid, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association. Journalists Asma Shirazi and Fahd Husain also attended the meeting.
Members of the Pakistan Peoples Party, the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and the PTI did not attend the gathering.
The NDC urged Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, President Asif Ali Zardari and PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif to initiate talks with the opposition. It said after the government forms its team, the NDC will announce the names of the opposition negotiating team after holding consultations with its jailed members.
“Let us create some environment. Let us bring some temperatures down and then we will do it,” Ismail said regarding a potential meeting with the jailed Khan.
Muhammad Ali Saif, a former adviser to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief minister, told participants of the meeting that Pakistan was currently in a “dysfunctional state” due to extreme political polarization.
“The tension between the PTI and the institutions, particularly the army, at the moment is the most fundamental, the most prominent and the most crucial issue,” Saif noted.
‘CHANGED FACES’
The summit proposed six specific confidence-building measures. These included lifting an alleged ban on political activities and the appointment of the leaders of opposition in Pakistan’s Senate and National Assembly.
The joint communique called for the immediate release of women political prisoners, such as Khan’s wife Bushra Bibi and PTI leader Yasmin Rashid, and the withdrawal of cases against supporters of political parties.
The communiqué also called for an end to media censorship and proposed that the government and opposition should “neither use the Pakistan Armed Forces for their politics nor engage in negative propaganda against them.”
Amir Khan, an overseas Pakistani businessperson, complained that frequent political changes in the country had undermined investors’ confidence.
“I came here with investment ideas, I came to know that faces have changed after a year,” Amir Khan said, referring to the frequent change in government personnel.
Khan’s party, on the other hand, has been calling for a “meaningful” political dialogue with the government.
However, it has accused the government of denying PTI members meetings with Khan in the Rawalpindi prison where he remains incarcerated.
“For dialogue to be meaningful, it is essential that these authorized representatives are allowed regular and unhindered access to Imran Khan so that any engagement accurately reflects his views and PTI’s collective position,” PTI leader Azhar Leghari told Arab News last week.
