Zubair Qureshi
Despite passage of five days, vaccination drive in the federal capital is far from picking up as the frontline health workers are either reluctant to get registered due to fears caused by misleading reports or the District Health Office (DHO) has not taken adequate measures for this.
Since the launch of the countrywide drive on Feb 3, only 34 doctors, paramedics and frontline health workers against coronavirus have been administered Chinese vaccine shots at the five vaccination centres set up at Polyclinic, Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), CDA, Tarlai and Bhara Kahu.
Strangely, the campaign that is picking up in Karachi and rest of the country, is still quite slow and sluggish in the federal capital and according to some sources, one of the causes of this slow trend is that the health staff is feeling scared because of the negative propaganda attached to the provision and administration of vaccine.
While talking to Pakistan Observer, District Health Officer Dr Zaeem Zia admitted the number of frontline health workers being vaccinated was not quite up to the mark as the federal government has provided 8,000 doses to the health department of Islamabad to be administered to around 7,500 frontline health workers.
The federal government has given the task to the Islamabad health department to vaccinate the frontline health workers in 13 days. Interestingly, five days have already passed and now the DHO has to vaccinate almost 1,000 health workers on a daily basis.
We have expedited the process of registration and vaccination will be underway in full gear from Monday (today), said Dr Zaeem Zia. He added that at all the five centres adequate numbers of staff and vaccination doses have been available.
We have directed that these centres would remain functional six days a week with Sunday as off-day, said Dr Zaeem. We shall be having 500 doses extra in case in case some more health workers who register at the last hour, he said.
“Alhamdulillah, vaccination against Covid19 is successfully being carried out in 5 health facilities of Islamabad. All Healthcare workers can send their CNIC to 1166 to get themselves scheduled. It’s safe and effective,” he said.
Islamabad on Sunday reported an alarming number of 115 new cases of Covid-19 in the last twenty-four hours while no death was reported in this while.
At present Islamabad’s total number of cases stand at 41,934 and expiries due to Covid-19, 478, According to the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) data, so are 40,160 patients have so far been qualified to be categorized as recovered cases of coronavirus in the federal capital.
