PESHAWAR: The health department is launching a month-long special Covid-19 vaccination campaign to scale up immunity of people as cases have been on the rise for the last one week.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has the lowest Covid-19 vaccination rate among all the provinces. National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) has asked the province to achieve at least 80 per cent vaccination target.

On Sunday, the province recorded 81 coronavirus cases and one death, making the total incidences 220,946 and fatalities 6,329 since onset of the pandemic, according to a health department report.

A 100-year-old person succumbed to the virus in Abbottabad, as the government extended health emergency for another three months to be able to cope with the situation in case of further increase in the number of patients.

Officials said that extension of emergency was important to stay prepared and procure medicines, masks and kits.

Govt extends health emergency for three months

“Though procurement is conducted through Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Public Procurement Authority’s rules and open bidding, we never know when cases increase to the extent to exhaust routine supply chain and we have to buy vital items through quotation,” they added.

They said that the province was launching 30-day special Covid-19 vaccination campaign that would continue July 25 to August 25.

In this regard, a detailed meeting with all the district health officers (DHOs) has already taken place on Monday last, followed by a meeting chaired by Chief Secretary Dr Shahzad Khan Bangash in which campaign timelines and modalities were discussed.

Officials said that it would be a four weeks campaign, six days a week, wherein targets were fixed for districts based on NCOC data. They said that data of NCOC was based on census 2017.

“Our full vaccination as a province is 61 per cent, the lowest among all federating units, hence the aim is to fully vaccinate 80 per cent population as assigned by NCOC,” said officials.

The DHOs have also been directed to prepare their micro plans for achieving the targets and focus on major priority areas, including public gatherings like Nadra and passport offices, district administration complexes, railway stations, medical teaching institutions (MTIs), basic health units (BHUs), rural health centres (RHCs) and district headquarters hospitals (DHQs).

The BHUs, RHCs and DHQs have been instructed to hold outreach sessions in their catchment areas and cover the people in markets, bus stands, Muharram processions, checkposts, motorways tuck shops and bus rapid transit stations. Outreach activities remain the only tool to successfully achieve the target.

“On directives of chief secretary, a detailed presentation is also being shared for the potential areas and ways to achieve the target as per NCOC’s guidelines,” said officials.

They said that DHOs were ordered to increase vaccinator logins to increase daily entries and help piling of backlogs on National Immunisation Management System (Nims).

Officials said that in view of upswing in infection, it was decided that daily situation reports of Covid-19 would be generated thrice a day, including 12 noon, 6pm and 10pm. “The night report will be shared with high-ups indicating performance ranking of the districts,” they added.

Districts have also been asked to increase testing and collect samples from at least 10 to 15 persons from the close contacts of the confirmed patients. “During the last 24 hours, only 1,680 samples were tested. It is not enough and we need at least 7,000 tests per day to know the exact prevalence of the virus in the province,” said officials.

Published in Dawn, July 25th, 2022