National Command and Operations Center (NCOC) has allowed walk-in COVID-19 vaccination facility for people aged 18 and above from June 11th.
The NCOC meeting was chaired by Asad Umar – Federal Minister for Planning and Development and was also attended by National Coordinator Lt Gen Hamood uz Zaman Khan and various other senior government officials. During the meeting, the forum decided to allow Pakistani citizens aged 18 and above to be inoculated against COVID-19 via walk-in facility.
The meeting also announced that COVID-19 vaccine centers will be operational from 8 am to 10 pm from June 11th. The vaccination facilities will remain closed on Sunday, said the NCOC.
Furthermore, NCOC has decided to further ease COVID-19 restrictions from June 15th next week as provinces have been directed to implement only one-day lockdown as compared to the previous two-day lockdown directives.
Work from home policy limiting 50 % attendance has also been reversed, with allowance for 100 % office attendance as part of NCOC’s decision to ease COVID-19 restrictions.
Meanwhile, NCOC has also given permission for non-contact sports, whereas contact sports (karate, boxing, MMA, rugby, kabbadi, wrestling, waterpolo etc) along with festivals are still banned.
Inter-provincial transport will not be subjected to two-day ban per week and public transport will also be allowed to operate at 70 % capacity instead of the previously allowed 50 % from June 15th.
The development comes as Pakistan reported COVID-19 positivity ratio of 2.54 % on Wednesday (today). The country also achieved the notable milestone of administering 10 million COVID-19 vaccine doses as part of the ongoing nationwide inoculation drive against the novel virus which is in fact the driving factor behind decreasing coronavirus cases.
According to NCOC figures, 4,741,579 people have been partially vaccinated against COVID-19 with 2,540,238 people being fully vaccinated against the novel virus with the country administering 335,790 COVID-19 vaccine doses in the last 24 hours.
Pakistan’s total COVID-19 tally stands at 936,131 cases with 21,453 deaths so far. A total of 869,691 people have successfully recovered from the novel virus, whereas 3,024 are still in critical condition.
