The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) on Friday announced that citizens over 18 will be eligible for a free anti-Covid booster shot of their choice from today (Saturday) onwards.
In a tweet, the NCOC said, “Age limit for a booster dose has been further reduced. Booster (one dose) will be administered after 6 months gap from complete vaccination.”
It is pertinent to note that a day earlier Pakistan reported seven Covid-19 related deaths and 3,567 new positive cases.
According to the NCOC’s statistics, 48,449 tests were conducted and the positivity ratio reached 7.36 per cent.
Meanwhile, Karachi’s coronavirus positivity ratio reached 28.80 per cent in the last 24 hours, according to NCOC’s data — slightly lower than 31 per cent, which was recorded on Thursday when 1,940 people tested positive for the infectious disease.
Over in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the government notified a new quarantine policy for passengers arriving at an airport or border terminals.
The notification said that in light of the directions of NCOC’s quarantine policy, the Covid affected passengers would be shifted to quarantine at home for 10 days instead of quarantining collectively at government facilities.
The Omicron variant is spreading fast in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as it has infected around 64 people across the province.
According to the health department’s spokesperson, 12 more omicron variant cases were detected in the province including six from Peshawar.
Similarly, two cases were reported from Mardan and one case each from Khyber, Malakand, Nowshera and Haripur districts.
He said that 12 omicron variant-infected people include seven women and five men.
As per province-wise details, 494,064 coronavirus cases have been reported in Sindh, 450,686 in Punjab, 181,996 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 110,243 in Islamabad, 34,726 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, 33,682 in Balochistan and 10,437 in Gilgit-Baltistan so far.
Covid-19 first emerged in the country in February 2020 and hit its peak in the summer. The cases started declining in July only to rise again towards the end of the year in the form of its second wave.
Two more Covid waves were witnessed in the first quarter and then in the second quarter of last year. The waves were driven by deadlier delta and the Indian variant of coronavirus. Now, the country is in the grip of a fifth wave fuelled by a superspreader variant, Omicron.
On January 11, Planning Minister Asad Umar, who supervises the government’s anti-Covid strategy, stated that the people who had not been vaccinated so far must get the shots as soon as possible, while those fully vaccinated six months ago, should go for a booster dose.
He also reiterated his call on all the provinces to follow the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and the obligatory regime in letter and spirit to curtail the spread of the fifth wave of Covid-19.
