Innovative measures being taken to speed up vaccination: Dr Yasmin Rashid

LAHORE : The Punjab government has decided to take innovative measures to speed up corona vaccination across the province and considering different proposals, including proposal for facility of door-to-door and drive-through vaccination in districts.

The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by Provincial Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid here on Saturday.

The Punjab chief secretary, additional chief secretary, Health Department administrative secretaries and other senior civil officers and military officers attended the meeting while all the deputy commissioners participated in it through video link.

The meeting was briefed that a revised target of vaccinating 430,000 people daily in the province had been set and each division had been informed about the new targets. The Lahore division has been given the target of inoculation of 97,000 people, including 60,000 in Lahore district. The target for DG Khan is vaccination of 12,000 people and for Bahawalpur is 25,000 people daily. Similarly, the daily target has been set at 21,000 for Sargodha division, 59,200 for Rawalpindi, 18,500 for Sahiwal, 44,400 for Multan division, 77,700 for Gujranwala and 74,000 for Faisalabad.

Speaking at the meeting, Provincial Health Minister Dr Yasmin Rashid said that as per the guidelines of the NCOC, the targets fixed must be met. She said that besides 677 centres, 223 mobile vaccination camps had also been set up for convenience of people. She stated that lady health workers were a very useful human resource and could play an important role in corona vaccination process. She mentioned that the process of recruitment of vaccinators would be completed soon to meet the shortage of human resource. The chief secretary said that administrative officers should use their creative skills to speed up the inoculation. He said that vaccination was also being carried out in Multan, Faisalabad, Lahore and other districts through mobile health units, adding that these facilities were helping administering vaccine to people of the remote areas. He said that the performance regarding the newly-set targets would be reviewed regularly.

The chief secretary also sought a report from the deputy commissioners on the strategy for vaccination prepared by the task forces set up in the districts.