Karachi: Sindh has started vaccinating its police personnel on a priority basis to protect them against coronavirus infection.
This was disclosed at a meeting of the provincial coronavirus Task Force on Thursday with Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah in the chair.
Earlier, the Inspector General of Sindh Police had approached the provincial Home Department with the request that the police personnel should be declared frontline workers to ensure their early vaccination. Since last year, 24 personnel of Sindh Police died due to coronavirus.
The Task Force was informed that four centres had been established in Karachi for vaccination of police personnel. The vaccination process is being carried out at these centres daily from 9am to 4pm throughout the week, except on Fridays.
Sindh Health Minister, Dr Azra Fazal Pechuho, briefed the meeting that in all there were 666 beds in the intensive care units of the hospitals having the facility of ventilators. Out of these, 454 are still vacant.
There are 1,872 hospital beds in the province having oxygen facility, and 343 of them are filled.
The Health Minister said that there was no shortage of oxygen for treating coronavirus patients in the hospitals of the province.
Sindh CM Shah said the people should follow the government’s directives and standard operating procedures (SOPs) against the spread of coronavirus in order to avoid the situation of complete lockdown.
He asked the Karachi’s Commissioner to seal off private offices in the city that were not adhering to the directive of maintaining maximum 50 per cent physical attendance of their staff.
He said the Sindh Police, Rangers and Karachi’s Commissioner should work together to ensure that the markets and shopping centres should remain open daily only from 6am to 6pm.
The Sindh government from Friday will also enforce a ban on inter-city passenger transport including buses coming from other provinces under the lockdown regime. The intra-city passenger transport will continue its operations with 50 per cent passenger capacity and observance of other anti-coronavirus SOPs.
