KARACHI: Hundreds of thousands of people queued at vaccination sites in Karachi on Saturday, rushing to get their COVID-19 jabs as new restrictions took force to curb the rapid spread of the coronavirus.
On Saturday, Karachi entered a week-long lockdown, as the city’s hospitals are close to saturation levels amid a sharp rise in infections blamed on the highly contagious delta variant of COVID-19. In the past 24 hours, over 2,770 new coronavirus cases have been reported across Sindh province, with Karachi recording over 2,200 — nearly half of Pakistan's daily tally.
A day earlier, Pakistan's federal pandemic response body, the National Command Operation Center, announced a ban on staff entering public offices, schools, restaurants, transport, shopping malls and air travel without vaccination certificates.
With the looming restrictions and a recent announcement by the provincial government that it also may move to block phone SIM cards of the unvaccinated, Karachi residents rushed to Expo Centre, the biggest inoculation center in Sindh, and other vaccination sites in the city. TV and social media footage showed long queues with people trying to get ahead of each other.
"Warning of blocking SIMs cards and lockdown worked,” Qasim Soomro, Sindh parliamentary secretary for health, told Arab News.
The numbers of people wanting to get their jabs have "increased manifolds," he said.
"We administered 185,406 doses yesterday. Today, there are long queues outside the centers,” Soomro added. “We are working on to increase the capacity from current 250,000 daily vaccine despite human resource restraints."
While media reports suggested some sites had run out of vaccines, the health secretary said there was" no issue of vaccines’ availability."
Some of the people who queued at the city's inoculation sites admitted they had no alternative as new restrictions could prevent them from working.
“I didn’t get the jab (earlier) because people said it has negative effects," Muhammad Latif, a street vendor who was waiting outside a center Saddar market, told Arab News.
"But for the sake of the bread and butter for my children, I’m getting it today,” he said.
Humaira Shahid, who got her jab after queuing for four hours at Expo Center, said she had lost several family members to COVID-19. But one of the immediate reasons for her to seek vaccination was the looming SIM card block.
“The fear that our SIM will be blocked is also one of the reasons," she said.
Pakistan has so far vaccinated nearly 30 million people. Less than 3 percent of its 220 million population have had the full two COVID-19 vaccine shots.
