Pak to begin COVID-19 vaccination of elderly people next month

Islamabad, Feb 10: The COVID-19 vaccination of Pakistan's senior citizens aged more than 65 years will begin next month, a senior minister said on Wednesday.

Planning Minister Asad Umar, who is also the chief of anti-coronavirus National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC), tweeted that the government will begin the registration process for the vaccination of the elderly people next week.

"Inshallah (God willing) will be opening up registration next week for COVID-19 vaccination for those 65 years and above. The vaccination of those who register in this category will start in March,” he said on Twitter.

The announcement by Umar is continuation of an earlier decision to first vaccinate the health workers and then the senior citizens.

The first part began last week after the first batch of 500,000 COVID-19 vaccine, donated by China, arrived in Pakistan on February 1.

Pakistan is also expected to get another 1.1 million doses of Sinopharm from China and another 17 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the first quarter of the year.

The number of COVID-19 cases reached 557,591 after 1,072 new coronavirus infections were detected in Pakistan, according to the Ministry of National Health Services. Another 62 people died in this period, taking the number of dead to 12,128. However, 514,951 people have recovered so far, it said.