Pakistan lowers coronavirus vaccination eligibility age to 15

• Children aged 15 and above in Pakistan will now be inoculated against coronavirus, says NCOC.
• NCOC says Pfizer vaccine to be used for children aged between 15 and 18 years.
• NCOC allows administration of second dose throughout the week.

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government has decided to further lower the age of those eligible to get a COVID-19 vaccine to 15 years.

The National Command and Operations Center (NCOC) said Saturday that people between the ages of 15 and 18 are now eligible for the vaccine.

Children between the ages of 15 and 18 will be vaccinated for free with the Pfizer vaccine, the NCOC said.

A registration certificate will be required for children up to the age of 18 to be vaccinated. According to the NCOC, the Pfizer vaccine will be available at all central vaccination centres.

The federal government had earlier disclosed its plan to begin COVID vaccination for people aged below 18 in the country.

The NCOC also said mobile vaccination teams will visit schools and colleges.

Second dose allowed throughout the week

Meanwhile, the NCOC has said that all those people, whose second dose against COVID-19 has become due, can visit any vaccination centre throughout the week to get the jab.

They are not required to wait for the message.

Sunday had earlier been particularly fixed for the administration of the second dose.

'More than 20m Pakistanis fully vaccinated' 

A day earlier, NCOC head Asad Umar had announced on Twitter that more than 20 million people in Pakistan are now fully vaccinated against coronavirus.

The NCOC head, who is also the federal planning and development minister, gave an update on the country's COVID-19 vaccination status, expressing confidence that Pakistan will "meet and surpass" its vaccination target.

The minister said the country had set a "daunting target" in the early days of the vaccination campaign of vaccinating 70 million people by the end of this year.

"In the early days of the vaccination campaign we had set a daunting target of vaccinating 7 crore people by the end of this year," he wrote.

He said he was happy to report that Pakistan has administered at least one dose of anti-coronavirus jabs to 50 million people.

What is the current status of vaccinations in Pakistan?

Pakistan has administered at least 66,456,245 doses of COVID vaccines so far. Assuming every person needs 2 doses, that’s enough to have vaccinated about 15.3% of the country’s population.

During the last week reported, Pakistan averaged about 1,136,823 doses administered each day. At that rate, it will take a further 39 days to administer enough doses for another 10% of the population.