PESHAWAR: Covid-19 claimed 12 more lives and infected 920 others in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Sunday as people continued to defy vaccination during the ongoing two-week campaign launched in 22 districts of the province early this month.

Mortalities from the virus reached 6,053, incidences 203,310 and active cases 13,688 in the province, a health department report said. It said that 11 died in Peshawar one in Mardan. Both the districts reported 314 and 148 new patients respectively. It said that positivity rate was 25 per cent in Mardan, 18 per cent in Nowshera, 16 per cent in Peshawar, 14 per cent in Charsadda and 12 per cent in Orakzai.

Officials say people are still hesitant to get vaccinated

The health workers said that most of the people, who refused to get vaccinated against Covid-19, hadn’t allowed oral polio vaccine to their children and were staunch opponents of vaccine. Most of the health conscious people had got vaccinated while others received the jabs when government made it mandatory for documentations. They said that the unvaccinated would be recorded.

They said that a report would be compiled regarding people telling lie about their vaccination status while others argued that they didn’t require Covid-19 shots at all.

“There are refusals. The people, who are notorious for reluctance to administer polio drops to their children, are now themselves not ready to take Covid-19 shots,” said the health workers.

Chief Secretary Dr Shehzad Bangash has directed administration of the low-performing districts to ensure that target is achieved.

The campaign targeting 8 million people above 12 years with deployment of over 30,000 personnel has shown some improvement since its launch on February 22 but pickets of refusals are posing obstacles.

On the first day of the campaign, 130,000 people were immunised. The number has now reached 25,000, both for first and second dose of vaccine. Vaccinators said that chief secretary also issued directives to the administration to resolve security-related issues in Lower Dir, Kohat and Torghar.

Health department is achieving 50 per cent of daily target of 552,000 people with only Charsadda (70pc) and Lakki Marwat (50pc). In Peshawar, the main hub of Covid-19, 15,000 people have been vaccinated against the target of about 120,000. More than 1,700 teams have been deployed only in Peshawar but people’s hesitancy hampers the vaccination process.

Vaccinators have been asked to collect National Identity Card number of people and a data will be prepared to be presented by chief secretary in the meeting of National Command and Operation Centre.

So far, 1.4 million people have been vaccinated in the effort modelled after the MR campaign last year. Health workers involved in door-to-door campaign said that they just recorded such cases by sending their NICs to Nadra if they were immunised.

Officials said that some people claimed that they had already got vaccine but there was no record and others said that vaccination was not important at all.

They said that the ongoing campaign would give a picture of vaccination scenario in the province and government may take the extreme measures like blocking mobile SIMS, etc to force the people for mandatory Covid-19 vaccination. “Presently, the campaign is voluntary and nobody is forced but at a later stage, everyone has to get immunised,” they added.

Published in Dawn, February 7th, 2022