ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s provincial government of Punjab said on Thursday it has vaccinated 23 million people in the last one month through a mass vaccination drive as Pakistan reports a surge in coronavirus cases driven by the omicron variant.  
Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, has reported 360 new infections in the last 24 hours, pushing the country’s overall positivity above 2 percent. Official data available with Arab News shows the province has so far reported 217 cases of the omicron variant, while 53 percent of eligible 81 million individuals in Punjab have been fully vaccinated.
The provincial health department started a “Reach Every Door” mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign across Punjab in October last year alongside its routine vaccination campaign. At least 14 million individuals were vaccinated during the drive.
The second phase of the mass campaign began in December and concluded this week, with authorities reporting that they administered doses to over 23 million individuals.
“These mass vaccination drives have helped us bring down the coronavirus infections, hospitalization and deaths of the patients in the province,” Hammad Raza Bukhari, a spokesperson for the Punjab Health Department, told Arab News on Thursday.
“Number of infections have been increasing for past some days, but so far there is no pressure on our health facilities,” Bukhari said.
He said the Punjab government was given a task by the National Command and Operations Center (NCOC), a federal body that leads Pakistan’s response against the pandemic, to vaccinate a total of 81 million people, saying that authorities have fully jabbed 53 percent of the target.
He added that the partial vaccination of 72 percent eligible persons had been completed.
“Our ‘Reach Every Door’ campaign has played a vital role in this success,” Imran Sikandar Baloch, Secretary Primary and Secondary Healthcare Punjab, said in a statement on Thursday.
While the mass vaccination drive has so far only been adopted by the Punjab government, the National Institute of Health plans to carry out a countrywide vaccination campaign in March this year.
Official data shows Punjab had reported 446,401 coronavirus positive cases till Wednesday while the number of active cases in the province was 3,935.
In the last 24 hours, the city of Lahore reported 320 positive cases, Rawalpindi 14, Multan nine and Faisalabad four cases.
Lahore has recorded a positivity ratio of 4 percent, Rawalpindi and Multan 2 percent, while Faisalabad reported a one percent positivity ratio over the last 24 hours.
“We can stop the spread of the virus only through vaccination and precautionary measures,” Baloch added.
Pakistan reported over 1,000 coronavirus infections in a single day on Thursday, the first time since October 14 last year that the daily cases count broke the thousand cases barrier.
The NCOC has said the country was not considering a lockdown but would ramp up vaccinations and impose further restrictions on the unvaccinated.