Authorities impose strict restrictions for non-vaccinated travel

Authorities on Thursday announced strict restrictions on non-vaccinated people in the country, including a ban on boarding domestic and international flights.

Non-vaccinated people will also not be allowed into educational institutions, shopping malls, or restaurants as of Friday, said the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), the country's anti-virus task force, urging people to get vaccinated before the Friday deadline.

On Tuesday, the NCOC relaxed restrictions in the eight most-vaccinated cities, namely Quetta, Peshawar, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Mirpur, Muzaffarabad, Gilgit, and Skardu.

Asad Umar, who heads the nation’s Covid-19 response, said in a separate statement that the only way to overcome the coronavirus pandemic was to "get a high percentage of citizens vaccinated."

READ: NCOC announces relaxing Covid restrictions in 8 cities

"Therefore, as part of the strategy to reward citizens and cities which vaccinate, there will be higher restrictions on cities with low level of vaccination & on citizens who are not vaccinated," he added.

Umar also announced that children older than 12 would be eligible for vaccination and that an initiative would be launched to administer jabs in schools.

Pakistan has expedited its inoculation drive in recent weeks, with over 80 million vaccine doses given to date and nearly one million shots in the last 24 hours.

Over 27.4 million people have been fully vaccinated so far, according to Health Ministry data, while the country recorded 1,742 new Covid-19 cases in the past 24 hours, raising the total to 1.24 million.

With 39 additional fatalities, the death toll also increased to 27,729 and 1.16 million people have recovered.