Pakistan reaches milestone of administering 40m Covid-19 jabs

Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar on Thursday said Pakistan had reached the milestone of administrating 40 million Covid-19 vaccine doses.

"The last crore (10 million) took only 9 working days to administer," the minister added in a tweet. "Let's vaccinate and make Pakistan safe from this disease."

On August 3, it was reported that Pakistan passed a major milestone of vaccinating 1 million people in a single day against the coronavirus.

"Happy to report that the target we had set for 1 million vaccinations in a day was crossed,” said the planning minister who also heads the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC).

Umar added that Islamabad had become the first city of the country where half of the population had received the Covid jab.

A day earlier, the NCOC decided that complete Covid-19 vaccination certificates would become mandatory for air travel after September 10.

The nerve centre of Pakistan’s virus response also took a major decision to speed up the vaccination process across the country.

The forum announced that the partial vaccination certificate would become invalid after September 10 “whereas all the provinces had been informed regarding this decision”.

The interval between the first and second doses of all types of vaccines is reduced from 42 days to 28 days, the forum added.

The decision was made in consultation with the Ministry of Health and medical experts, it said.

The NCOC had underlined that the early completion of the vaccination process is useful in reducing the disease prevalence and spread in the country.