Islamabad: The district administration in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) has warned private sector schools owner against refusing entry to health teams inoculating 12-15 years old children with measles and rubella (MR) vaccine.
The District Health Officer in a meeting and correspondence with schools administrations has warned their premises could be sealed if they didn’t allow their children administration of M&R vaccine.
Likewise, Rawalpindi’s District Health Authority is all set to register cases against those school owners who refused to allow the teams to vaccinate the children against M&R.
Pakistan has set a target of 90 million children to be vaccinated during 15-27 November national campaign.
Strict action would be taken against those schools owners who are turning away the Measles and Rubella vaccination teams, the meeting decided.
There are some schools that would not allow administering vaccination without parents consent. This was told by district health officials during a meeting presided over by Deputy Commissioner (DC) Rawalpindi Mohammad Ali.
The DC has asked the district health authority to seal the schools and register cases against the owners who refused to vaccinate the children.
Pakistan’s coronavirus vaccination drive for children aged 12-15 years has been temporarily suspended due to countrywide measles and rubella vaccination campaign.
NCOC to set up call centres to convince unvaccinated
The NCOC has, meanwhile, decided to set up call centres and chatbots to reach out to people eligible for COVID-19 vaccination.
The decision was taken at a meeting of the NCOC presided over by Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar.
According to a statement, the NCOC has directed all stakeholders to beef up vaccination outreach measures after measles and rubella campaign for maximum inoculation of eligible population.
Since phone connections were registered through computerised national identity cards (CNICs) and vaccination was also being done through CNICs, it was easy to know which person was yet to be vaccinated, said an official of the NCOC.
We are considering contacting unvaccinated people through their registered cellphone numbers to convince them to get vaccinated, he said.
We are hopeful that people will go for inoculation once they will be told that they haven’t got themselves vaccinated or why they did not go for the second shot,” he said.
Positivity rate rises
Pakistan on Thursday recorded above 1 per cent COVID-19 positivity rate for the first time in five days.
The last time Pakistan recorded 1.01 per cent positivity rate was on November 12.
According to the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) the country’s positivity rate was 1.1 per cent on Thursday as 460 cases were diagnosed after 41,131 tests conducted during the past 24 hours.
Ten deaths were also reported in the last one day, the NCOC data further reveals.
According to the Ministry of the National Health Services (MNHS), Pakistan’s death toll after 10 fatalities in 24 hours climbed to 28,638 while tally of cases stand at 1,280,822.
The country’s total recoveries after 336 recovered in 24 hours were recorded at 1,229,683.
