ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will administer coronavirus vaccine doses to children within the 5-11 year age bracket from September 19, a government official confirmed on Friday, adding the campaign will take place in the capital and selective districts of the country’s Sindh and Punjab provinces.
To date, Pakistan has administered full doses of the coronavirus vaccine to 131 million individuals above 12 years of age, according to official data. The country has reported 242 confirmed cases of coronavirus with 4 deaths in the last 24 hours and a positivity ratio of 1.80%.
Ever since the first case of the disease was reported in Pakistan two-and-a-half years ago, the South Asian country has reported over 1.5 million coronavirus cases, over 30,000 deaths and currently has 8,343 active coronavirus cases.
To stem the spread of the virus, the Federal Directorate of Immunisation (FDI) and the National Institute of Health (NIH) have been coordinating with relevant authorities in provinces for the timely distribution of coronavirus vaccines.
“The vaccination of children between five to eleven years of age would be completed across Pakistan in different phases,” Nazia Hassan Khan, a spokesperson at the NIH, told Arab News.
She said the NIH would launch an awareness campaign about children’s vaccination from next week. Khan added that the government would maximize its resources to vaccinate the most number of children in the campaign’s first phase.
“Our vaccination campaign has nothing to do with the floods and it will go on as per plan,” she said, stressing the importance of vaccination to curb the virus.
The first phase of the vaccination would take place from September 19 to 25 in selective districts of Punjab, Sindh and Pakistan’s capital city, Islamabad.
In Punjab, the districts that would be covered in the first phase include Faisalabad, Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan, Okara and Bahawalpur. In Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, authorities would vaccinate children in Karachi and Hyderabad districts during the first phase.
“These are the areas where there are no floods, therefore we are covering them in the first phase,” Abdul Basit, an official at the FDI, told Arab News.
He said all children in the 5-11 year age bracket would be administered a half dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which amounts to 0.2 mL, the amount recommended by health authorities worldwide.
“The vaccinators will be visiting schools and religious seminaries during the week to administer vaccines to the maximum number of children,” Basit said, adding that parents could also visit vaccination centres close to their residences to vaccinate their children.
He advised parents to make sure while they vaccinate their children, that the vial to be used should have an orange-coloured cap and label on it.
