PESHAWAR: Seventeen more people died of Covid-19 and 968 new cases were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Sunday as authorities continued efforts to achieve vaccination target in the high-risk districts including Peshawar, Dir Upper, Shangla, Bajaur, Kurram Lower, Bannu and North Waziristan.

Peshawar reported 13 new deaths due to the pandemic while one each patient passed away in Mardan, Swat, Dera Ismail Khan and Kohat. The provincial capital detected 189 new cases, Kohat 146, Charsadda 119, Mohmand 100, Malakand 89, Nowshera 79, Khyber and Abbottabad 45 each, Mardan 35 and Chitral Lower and Bannu reported 21 new cases each, according to a report of health department.

Efforts on to achieve vaccination target in high-risk districts

It said that vaccination rate in Peshawar, Dir Upper, Shangla, Bajaur, Kurram Lower, Bannu, North Waziristan, Kohistan Lower and Upper, South Waziristan and Kolai Palas was 40.79pc, 40.67pc, 38.17pc, 36.99pc, 33.92pc, 32.68pc, 32.44pc, 32.34pc, 26.88pc, 21.21pc 14.22pc and 13.89pc respectively.

According to the report, Haripur (88.5pc), Chitral Upper (86.96pc), Charsadda (86.06), Chitral Lower (82.56), Swat (82.54pc), Malakand (80.80pc), Mardan (78.38), Mansehra (77.93pc), Dir Lower (77.49pc), Nowshera (76.33pc), Karak (75.25pc), Buner (74.99pc), Kurram Upper (74.45pc), Abbottabad (73.05pc), Lakki Marwat (72.12pc), Swabi (71.75pc) and Orakzai (70.59pc) have achieved over 70 per cent of their vaccination target.

Dr Mohammad Arif, the provincial director of expanded programme on immunisation (EPI), told Dawn that they were vaccinating 250,000 persons per day against the target of 532,000 individuals because some people opposed vaccination on different pretexts.

He said that initially, there were some security-related issues that were promptly resolved by the government. “Now, vaccinators are quite safe because police have been deployed for their protection. We are trying to cover the target population. Low pace of vaccination in hotspots of the virus is a big challenge,” said Dr Arif.

He said that health department also planned to continue the door-to-door campaign till March and cover those people, who were left out of the ongoing drive due to their unwillingness or other reasons.

Dr Arif said that 13,000 teams, each consisting three persons, were deputed during the campaign to vaccinate the target people. In some districts, people appeared health-conscious and got inoculated readily while in the poor-forming districts, misconceptions about vaccination hampered the effort, he added.

“However, we would take necessary measures to cover the missed people once we compile a report on the current campaign,” he said. He added that the report would be dispatched to the government wherein causes of low vaccination would be mentioned.

Dr Arif said that some people defied immunisation because they didn’t consider it useful while others said that they had been given shots before. “A complete record is being made,” he added.

He said that during the drive, eight types of vaccines were administered free of cost to the people. He added that all types of the injections were safe and didn’t entail any side effects or reaction.

Dr Arif said that they sent their progress report to chief secretary through health secretary regarding vaccination. He said that the report was presented at the meetings of National Command and Operation Centre. He added that so far, 43pc overall target (39pc first dose and 50pc second doses), was met by vaccinators in 22 districts during the last 24 hours.

Meanwhile, the province’s death toll due to the virus reached 6,130 and infections sore to 210,726. Of the conformed people, 90 pc have recovered. The number of active cases is 13,266 in the province.

Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2022