PESHAWAR: The vaccination of Covid-19 frontline employees will begin on Wednesday in 17 centres set up in eight districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (today).
Since the beginning of last year, the province has reported 32 deaths and 3,113 coronavirus cases among healthcare providers.
The vaccine will begin concurrently in the specified centres. In each centre, approximately 50 health workers will receive shots per day. The first dose of the vaccine will be given to a total of 850 health staff.
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“After 21 days, the second dose of the vaccine will be given,” officials told the scribe.
17 centres set up in eight districts
According to them, 16,000 doses have been procured by the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, which are intended only for 30,000 health care professionals, including physicians, nurses, paramedics, and related diagnosis of swabs taken from alleged patients with Covid-19.
The consignment we received from the National Command and Control Centre (NCOC) was transported under tight police protection from Islamabad to the main cold storage facility in Peshawar. Supplies will be made on request by the district health officers to the respective centres, they added.
In order to shield them from a pandemic in the initial step of vaccination, the health department is even contemplating putting Rescue 1122 employees on the roster of frontline personnel.
Enlisted health workers will get a call on their cell phone, after which they will go to the vaccine site.
Five centres have been developed in Peshawar, which registered the majority of Covid-19 deaths among health workers and the general public, to administer the vaccine to 250 healthcare professionals every day.
Special protection steps have been taken in eight districts, including Peshawar, Abbottabad, Mansehra, Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, Nowshera, Mardan and Swat, where the vaccine will be given to frontline personnel within two months.
The NCOC offers specific guidance on the safety procedures of the cars delivering the vaccine, as well as the immunisation centres, to ensure that the doses are received by the designated employees.
Officials said they were introduced to the virus by frontline staff. They said that among the workers delivering care to infected patients in hospitals, three per cent of the nationwide Covid-19 cases were registered.
They suggested that the vaccine initiative will be steadily expanded to 280 centres in all 35 districts prior to the initiation of high-risk populations aged 65 and 50 years of age and those with underlying diseases. They said that 78.1% of people who died of coronavirus were over 50 years of age, and 74% were comorbid.
“In the second phase, the staff associated with frontline workers will be vaccinated when NCOC provides us with more vaccine,” the officials said. According to the NCOC report, 133 health staff, including 85 physicians, 44 paramedics, three nurses and one medical student, have died of Covid-19 in Pakistan and 13,807 cases have been registered.
It claimed that 59% of the infected people were doctors, 26% were paramedics and 15% were nurses. Sindh lost 52 health staff, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 32, Punjab 20, Islamabad 11, Balochistan 8, Azad Jammu and Kashmir 7, and Gilgit-Baltistan confirmed the deaths of three healthcare providers due to the virus, it said.
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Officials said 94 percent of the staff were healing from the infectious disease, but the infection was still at risk. 16 new cases have been identified over the past 24 hours, they said.
“11,746 deaths and 502,537 cases have been reported in Pakistan and the second wave is ongoing, so health workers have been placed at the top of vaccination priorities to ensure their protection against the disease,” the officials said.
They said that the vaccine intake record would be sent to the NCOC on a regular basis and new consignment demands would be imposed on it.
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