If not administered, 31m doses of Covid-19 jabs to expire by August

KARACHI: Around 31 million doses of different Covid-19 vaccines are going to expire by August this year. The situation is compelling health authorities to launch a two-week nationwide campaign for administrating booster doses to vaccine-eligible people.

An official associated with the Covid-19 vaccination drive told The News the vaccination drive will kick off from coming Monday to persuade unvaccinated or partially vaccinated individuals to get fully vaccinated. He added those who are fully vaccinated will be convinced to receive first and second booster doses “as 31 million doses of the Pfizer’s and Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccines will expire by August this year”.

Incidentally, only nine million of the 120 million fully-vaccinated people have so far received the first booster dose of Covid-19 vaccine, said health officials, adding that hardly 2 percent people have managed to get the second booster dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Pakistan acquired millions of doses of mRNA vaccines, including Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca vaccines through COVAX facility while the country also received several million doses of Chinese vaccines like Sinopharm, Sinovac and Cansino from China as donations. In addition, the country also purchased vaccines from the US, Chinese and Russian biotechnological companies in a bid to vaccinate 143 million eligible population.

Fortunately, with no death reported for several weeks, the coronavirus disease is well under control in the country as the positivity rate was only 0.25 percent on Friday.

Sindh is the best performing province in the country in terms of administration of Covid-19 vaccination, where 98 percent or more than 33 million people are fully vaccinated, followed by Islamabad, where 1.2 million people or 90 percent of the vaccine-eligible population is vaccinated.

In Punjab, around 86 percent of the eligible population is fully vaccinated, which means that over 64 million people have received both the doses of Covid-19 vaccine, said officials, adding that in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 63 percent of the eligible population i.e around 14 million people, isfully vaccinated. Around 59 percent population of Balochistan and 67 percent of Azad Kashmir is fully vaccinated against Covid-19. Gilgit-Baltistan is the worst performing in terms of administration of Covid-19 vaccination as only 53 percent or over half a million people of its eligible population were y vaccinated.