PESHAWAR: As coronavirus cases and mortalities due to the pandemic continue to decline, Khyber Teaching Hospital has started vaccination of patients’ attendants as part of the health department’s plan to boost up inoculation and ensure safety of people.

The government has also extended public health emergency for three more months, according to a notification issued by health department.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which has been recording less than 100 cases and five mortalities from the infection for the past one week, has focused on vaccination of people and is employing different methods to scale up awareness regarding Covid-19 jabs and safeguard them against the infection.

On Wednesday, the KTH administration began administering jabs to relatives of the admitted patients as the health department already made immunisation of all visitors to hospitals mandatory.

Peshawar hospital starts vaccination of patients’ attendants

A vaccination centre has been operating at the hospital where on average 400 persons get the vaccine per day. The new measure launched by the hospital was meant to provide Covid-19 vaccine to the people accompanying the hospitalised patients, said a press release.

According to it, vaccinators visit different wards of the hospitals to administer jabs to the patients’ relatives in line with the government directives.

Last week, health department allowed the hospitals to resume OPDs for general patients but vaccination was made obligatory for both patients and their relatives.

KTH spokesman Sajjad Khan said that the drive would continue to make sure that all the relatives of the patients get vaccinated. He added that response to the new drive on the first day was highly encouraging as people readily got the vaccine.

“Details of the vaccinated persons are soon uploaded on Nadra software. The people have trust in hospitals and they welcome our vaccination campaign in wards,” he said. He added that most of the patients’ relatives were not vaccinated and it was a blessing for them to get the medicine and stay safe from the virus.

Mr Khan said that the campaign would continue. Most of the people, who were vaccinated in wards, described the negative propaganda against the vaccine as a main reason for not getting immunised, he added.

The province has so far given vaccine to 1.5 million people and has planned to immunise 19 million target people above 18 years by end of this year.

Meanwhile, the government has extended public health emergency for three more months to ensure rapid procurement of medical equipment and strict implementation of standard operating procedure for prevention of Covid-19 in the province.

The extension of the emergency, which was first enforced in February last year when the pandemic broke out, is meant to ensure prompt procurement of personal protective equipment (PPEs) along with the medicines for effective management of the pandemic in the province.

A notification issued on Wednesday said that the health emergency was extended from July 1, 2021 to September 30 to be able to cope with the threat posed by the coronavirus efficiently.

Officials said that government had invoked Public Health (Surveillance and Response) Act, 2017 on February 3, 2020 to be able to acquire medical supplies and other resources in speedy manner and put brakes on possible transmission of the virus.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2021