Covid vaccinators fan out across BRT, bus stops

In order to pace up Covid-19 vaccination, the provincial government has decided to completely ban the unvaccinated persons on BRT, public transport as well as NADRA offices and teams have been deployed to check certificate and vaccinate people on the spot.

Talking to The Express Tribune an official said that there is some reluctance in a segment of society as far as the Covid-19 vaccination is concerned and in order to address this hesitancy a complete ban had been placed on unvaccinated persons at BRT and other public transport and teams have been deployed to vaccinate people on the spot after which they are allowed to travel.

By the same token, teams have also been deployed at bus stands and NADRA offices where they check certificates and vaccinate the unvaccinated people. These teams are managed and supervised by the district administration.

“They check the vaccine certificates and those who are not vaccinated are inoculated otherwise they are not allowed to board public transport, enter NADRA office or use BRT service,” he said.

“The mobile teams have inspectors and vaccinators who go to NADRA offices, BRT stations and bus terminals and they check certificates on a daily basis. There are seven such teams deployed at BRT stations alone,” he said.

It is worth mentioning here that in the rural Peshawar people are reluctant to get themselves vaccinated despite all efforts on the part of the government. Even the door to door vaccination drive was a failure in most parts of Peshawar.

“There are shopkeepers and restaurant owners who are not allowed to open their shops without vaccination certificates so some of them have obtained fake certificates and some just received a single dose of vaccine to show the authorities that they received the first shot and will soon get the second one too,” said another official, adding that despite this a large number of people in urban centres were willing to be inoculated and there are long lines outside the vaccination centres.

On Tuesday 15 people died of Covid in the province as 171 new cases were also reported. This increased the number of total deaths to 5,608 in K-P. Peshawar remains on top of the fatality chart and in terms of new cases as around 100 new cases were reported from Peshawar, 17 from Mardan, 13 from Abbotabad and 12 from Kohat.

Parallel with the Covid-19 situation, dengue has also gripped the entire province as Peshawar, Buner and Nowshera are among the hardest hit districts in K-P.

Local residents on social media claim that there are thousands of cases of dengue in the province but these claims are strongly denied by the K-P Health Department.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 7^th, 2021.