Islamabad: The Punjab government has suspended two senior doctors, including the Medical Superintendent (MS) of Lahore’s Kot Khawaja Saeed Hospital, over the fake entry of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s name in the government vaccination portal.
According to the police, the former premier’s national identity card was misused for making the fake entry.
Two officials have been suspended for failing to ensure transparency in the vaccination process and letting two lower-cadre staff (a security guard and a ward boy) handle entries.
Both the doctors have been directed to relinquish the charge immediately and report to the health department.
Moreover, the watchman and the ward boy of the hospital were also arrested for their involvement in making the fake entries.
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in its FIR said the security guard Abdul Hassan and ward attendant Adil Rafique stating that they misused the tab name/login of a vaccinator Naveed Altaf to make the fake entry of the former premier using his national identity card on September 22.
According to the FIA cybercrime wing, watchman Abul Hassan and ward boy Adil used the ID of third employee Naveed to enter former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s fake entry into the system.
A report was also submitted to Chief Minister of the Punjab Sardar Usman Buzdar on Friday that pointed out loopholes and highlighted lapses in the hospital’s monitoring and supervision systems.
Fake vaccination controversy
According to reports, Nawaz Sharif’s name was entered in the National Immunisation Management System (NIMS) on Wednesday and after the media reported it both the government and the opposition leaders responded by blaming each other.
According to the entry, Nawaz Sharif who has been in London since November 2019, received his first dose of COVID-19 (Sinovac) vaccine at the Government Kot Khawaja Saeed Hospital on September 22 and as per the fake entry, he was conveyed that the date for second dose would be sent to him through a text message later.
Nawaz’s daughter and vice president of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Maryam Nawaz in a statement expressed her surprise over the fake entry of her father in the government portal and said it put a big question mark on the entire process of vaccination doubtful.
“It only exposes the system and the government’s vaccine registration mechanism,” she said in her statement.
50 deaths reported in 24 hours
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s COVID-19 positivity rate remained below 5 per cent for the seventh consecutive day, Friday, and according to the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), 2,233 infections were reported against 52,788 tests carried out in the past 24 hours.
The COVID-19 positivity rate in the country stands at 4.23 per cent, the NCOC data reveals adding, the active cases of COVID-19 have also dropped from 61,558 on Thursday to 60,952 on Friday.
The country’s toll after 50 deaths in the last twenty-four hours climbed to 27,482 while 2,789 persons recovered from the virus in the last one day.
