Staff Reporter Islamabad
Federal Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Minister Asad Umar announced on Tuesday that Pakistan had hit the target of administering one million Covid-19 vaccination doses in a day.
The minister said in a tweet: “[I am] happy to report that the target we had set for 1 million vaccinations in a day was crossed yesterday with 10 lakh 72 thousand vaccinations.
All federating entities contributed with Punjab, Sindh, KP and Islamabad all doing record numbers. Amazing performance by all involved.”
In another tweet, the minister gave an update on how much of the main cities’ populations had received at least one dose of the vaccine.
“Islamabad has become the first city in Pakistan with a population of 1 million or more to get 50pc of its eligible population vaccinated with at least one dose,” he stated.
“Peshawar and Rawalpindi at 35pc, Faisalabad at 28pc, Lahore, Gujranwala, Sialkot and Sargodha at 27pc, Karachi at 26pc and Hyderabad at 25pc.”
According to the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) — the nerve centre of Pakistan’s Covid response — a total of 31,929,581 doses of Covid vaccines had been administered across Pakistan as of Monday, with 1,072,342 doses administered the very day.
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan also confirmed the milestone and congratulated “all who have made this happen”.
Meanwhile, Pakistan reported 67 new coronavirus deaths, raising the nationwide tally to 23,529 on Tuesday.
About 3,582 new coronavirus cases have been recorded in the last 24 hours, according to the data issued by National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) on its official web portal. The coronavirus positivity rate in Pakistan stood at 7.19% with 75,373 active cases across the country.
The NCOC data reveals that at least 49,798 coronavirus tests were conducted across the country in the last 24 hours, out of which 3,582 came back positive. Meanwhile, 682,290 people have recovered from the virus in the country so far.
In addition to this, 1,355 patients have recovered from the virus in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of recoveries to 944,375, while the total number of cases has reached 1,043,277.
In a province-wise breakdown, the total number of coronavirus patients in Sindh has reached 387,261, 145,306 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 358,387 in Punjab, 88,344 in Islamabad, 30,627 in Balochistan, 25,034 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and 8,318 in Gilgit-Baltistan.
