ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s planning minister Asad Umar, who also heads a federal body overseeing Pakistan’s pandemic response, on Thursday said the government planned to start registering all citizens to receive the coronavirus vaccine after the Eid Al-Fitr holiday in mid-May.

Starting February, Pakistan started vaccinating frontline health care workers and citizens over the age of 60 free of charge using over 1 million Sinopharm doses donated by China. It has since purchased more doses of the Sinopharm and Cansino Biologics COVID-19 vaccines from China. Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has also been privately imported by pharmaceutical companies.

“Umar termed the next five to six weeks ‘critical’ for the ongoing third wave of the virus in Pakistan,” Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper said, reporting that the minister had said registration would open for all citizens from mid May.

“We will be able to vaccinate more than 125,000 people per day after Eid,” Umar added. 

Pakistan on Thursday said 3,942 COVID-19 patients were in critical condition in the South Asian nation of 220 million people, the highest number since the pandemic started last year. The country also recorded the highest single day rise in coronavirus infections since June last year, reporting 5,329 new cases and 98 deaths in the past 24 hours, a government portal said on Thursday.

Pakistan’s tally of coronavirus cases has now reached 705,517, with 15,124 deaths since last February.

“During last 24 hours most death occurred in Punjab followed by KP [Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” the government announced. “Out of 98 deaths during last 24 hours 31 died on ventilators.”

Meanwhile, the health minister of Pakistan’s most populous Punjab province, Dr. Yasmin Rashid, said Punjab would soon, after cabinet approval, purchase one million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine.

“Local preparation of vaccine may take 6 to 10 months’ time,” Rashid was quoted by local media as saying.