A report compiled by the first health department of Pakistan's Punjab shows that the province still did not achieve its set target for Covid-19 vaccination, reports ARY News, adding that around 300,000 recipients of the primary dose of the vaccine never returned for the second.
In what comes as an unusual move to tackle coronavirus disease (Covid-19) vaccine hesitancy, the provincial government in Pakistan's Punjab has now decided to dam the SIM cards of unvaccinated citizens, press agency ANI reported on Friday. the choice , as per ARY News, was taken at a gathering in Lahore presided over by the province's health minister Dr. Yasmin Rashid. The move is seemingly aimed toward forcing all those citizens who refuse to urge themselves vaccinated to try to to so at the earliest.
Dr. Rashid, the provincial health minister in Pakistan's Punjab, said that there has been a "considerable decrease" in Covid-19 cases within the province thanks to mass vaccinations.
However, a report compiled by the Punjab primary health department shows that the province still did not achieve its set target for Covid-19 vaccination, reports ARY News, adding that around 300,000 recipients of the primary dose of the vaccine never returned for the second dose since the beginning of Pakistan's mass inoculation drive on Groundhog Day .
An official of Pakistan's ministry of national health services (NHS) said that the administration is identifying and categorising the people that never showed up for the second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine on their due dates.
"There may be a possibility that a number of them may need died before getting the second dose," ANI quoted the official as saying. He noted that while a neighborhood of those people may need contracted the coronavirus after receiving the primary dose and decided to not get the second, others might simply have fallen prey to negative propaganda regarding the vaccine.
Meanwhile, Pakistan's minister of finance Shaukat Tarin is about to present the country's budget speech in capital Islamabad on Friday afternoon, as he faces a challenge in walking the fine line between spending big over post-Covid economic recovery and keeping the deficit in restraint as Pakistan emerges from the more infectious third wave of the coronavirus disease (Covid pandemic).
