NCOC takes vaccine drive door-to-door

The government on Tuesday stepped up the ongoing anti-coronavirus vaccine campaign by taking it door-to-door as part of the unified national effort led by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) to stem the spread of the global pandemic.

The country has seen a quick spread of the infectious disease, driven by the Omicron variant, which saw the single-day tally of new cases soar past 8,000 in January for the first time since the pandemic’s outbreak two years ago in February.

However, the official data suggested that the single-day tally declined to 5,327 during the last 24 hours, while the national positivity ratio came down below 10% for the first time in many weeks but the daily death toll rose to 32, the highest this year.

The NCOC announced a two weeks door-to-door vaccination campaign titled ‘Every Pakistani Safe from Coronavirus’ to get rid of the Covid-19 epidemic. The February 1-14 vaccine campaign would cover all the people above the age of 12 years.

Addressing a news conference in the federal capital, Planning Minister Asad Umar, who also heads the NCOC, said that more than 55,000 vaccination teams would go door-to-door to vaccinate the unvaccinated individuals.

Umar said that more than 80 million people had been fully vaccinated in the country so far, while around 100 million individuals had been administered at least one dose of the vaccine. “A total of 180 million people had been vaccinated fully or partially,” he added.

Read Active Covid cases top 100,000

The NCOC chief once again appealed to the public to cooperate with the vaccination teams in their campaign to ensure safety of the Pakistanis and get rid of the pandemic. “During the Omicron spread, it is observed that those areas are safe where vaccination ratio is high.”

According to Umar, the door-to-door campaign would target administration of vaccine shots to 35,000,000 people. He stressed the need for the masses to “inform your neighbours, relatives and others about this opportunity of vaccination”.

Umar appealed to the masses to complete the vaccination if they had not yet received their second dose. He said that those who had received their second dose six months ago, “must get a booster shot”. So far, he added, 2.6 million people had received the booster shot.

Further, Dr Faisal Sultan, the special assistant to PM on health, urged the people to welcome the mobile vaccination teams at homes, and get vaccinated. He said that like the first two doses, the booster dose was also totally free.

(WITH INPUT FROM APP)