KARACHI: A COVID-19 vaccination drive in educational institutions in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province got off to a slow start on Monday with just the distribution of parental consent forms, after the country’s pandemic response body barred students under 17 from getting jabs, a spokesperson for the Sindh health department said.
Sindh Health Minister Dr. Azra Pechuho last week announced that a vaccination drive for students of private and public schools and colleges would kick off from September 6. 
According to a handout issued by the Sindh health department, a total of 1.4 million students in grades 9 to 12 would be vaccinated during the drive, to be carried out by 2,527 teams.
However, almost all high school students in grades 9 to 10 are below 17 years of age, which is the National Command and Operation Center’s (NCOC) age of eligibility. The NCOC is Pakistan’s federal pandemic response body. 
“The NCOC didn’t give approval to continue with the vaccine drive [for students below age 17],” Sindh Health Department spokesperson Mehar Khurshid told Arab News on Monday. “The vaccines will be administered at schools to students who are 17 years old and above.” 
The drive was officially launched today, Monday, with parental consent mandatory for students below 18 years of age, Khurshid said.
On Sunday, Sindh Education Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah said parents couldn’t be forced to get their children vaccinated.
“Sindh Education Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah has refuted a message of ‘directives’ to parents,” his spokesperson Saeed Memon said, adding that the minister had only “requested” parents to get their children vaccinated.
Speaking to Arab News, Haider Ali, the chairman of the All Sindh Private Schools and Colleges Association, said the vaccine drive would run in higher secondary schools and colleges and consent forms would be issued to those who met the age criteria set by the NCOC.
The decision, he said, was taken at a meeting of Sindh education department officials and representatives of private schools and colleges, which reviewed the age criteria and other requirements.
“Only those students are going to get vaccines whose age is 17 or above and whose parents grant their consent by signing the forms we have distributed today,” Ali said.
Once consent forms are collected, the data would be shared with relevant district health officer who would form vaccination teams for higher secondary schools and colleges, he added, saying high school students were practically out of the drive.
The COVID-19 positivity ratio has remained consistently high in Karachi and Hyderabad, which are the largest and most densely populated cities of the province. However, the number of new coronavirus cases in Sindh declined from 2,734 on August 4 to 1,016 on September 5.
According to the health department, 27,483,661 vaccine doses had been administered in the province so far, covering 34.83 percent of its eligible population.
The province has also ordered new measures to stem the spread of the virus and further boost its vaccination program. Provincial authorities on Sunday requested the NCOC to direct banks, post offices and courier services not to accommodate the unvaccinated. Sindh authorities have also asked restaurants and hotels to provide dine-in and dine-out services to only those who had vaccine certificates.