PESHAWAR: Following an uptick in the nationwide coronavirus incidence, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa health department has asked employees of public sector hospitals to get fully vaccinated against the infectious disease.

The directions come in line with the advice of the NCOC, the country’s nerve centre for the fight against Covid-19, for all provinces to ensure that doctors, nurses, paramedics and support staff of hospitals get the required jabs of coronavirus vaccines as the country’s overall virus positivity rate nears four per cent.

In an advisory, the KP health department ordered speedy vaccination of the employees of medical teaching institutions and other health facilities against Covid-19 through two mandatory and booster jabs each to protect themselves and others from the virus.

According to officials, the second dose is administered a month after the first, while the subsequent booster jabs have a spacing of four months.

Directions come from health dept after rising virus cases in country

They told Dawn that hospital employees attending to patients were vulnerable to the infection due to the arrival of hundreds of unvaccinated people every day.

A total of 5,049 employees of health facilities in the province have been infected with Covid-19 since the outbreak of the virus early 2020 with 49 of them eventually losing life, according to a report of the World Health Organisation’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa sub-office.

Of those cases, 3,532 were men (70pc) and 1,517 women.

The report said the doctors accounted for 2,406 coronavirus patients (47pc), nurses 1,911 (38pc) and paramedics 732 (14pc) cases.

It added that a total of 224,856 cases were recorded by the province and 140,144 of them (61pc) were men and 84,712 (39pc) women.

According to the report, 6,374 lost life to the virus and 59pc of them (3,761) were men and the rest (2,613) women.

The cases included 49,517 from the age bracket of 21-30, 45,122 from 31-40 and 27,361 from 40-50.

The report said the virus was diagnosed in 5,371 children aged up to 10 years and 32,581 aged between 10 and 20 years.

It added that the cases included 538 people of the 91-110 age group.

Of the 6,374 people killed by the virus, 1,912 were aged between 61 and 70 years, 1,695 between 51 and 60 years and 1,071 between 71 and 80 years.

According to the report, four children below four years of age also died of the infection, while the people killed by it in the age bracket of 11-20 totalled 34.

Health officials told Dawn that though the countrywide Covid-19 incidence was rising, the infectious disease was “vanishing” in the province with only a few cases being reported daily and that, too, mostly in Peshawar district.

They said the health department wanted to ensure that the first and second coronavirus booster jabs are administered to all population to prevent the outbreak of the virus in case of the emergence of its new variants.

The officials said the people were required to get the first booster shot six months after full vaccination and second four months later to ensure their complete protection against the virus due to the emergence of new variants from time to time.

They said a vaccination facility was available at all health centres in the province free of charge.

The officials said the Covid-19 would break out in the province “anytime”after the surfacing of its new variants in other countries, so the people should get jabs without delay as a precautionary measure.

They said currently, eight coronavirus patients were admitted to hospitals in the province.

The officials said the Covid-19 vaccination was compulsory for every citizen until the official announcement by the WHO that the pandemic is over.

Published in Dawn, December 25th, 2022