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Thursday, March 28, 2024

NADRA starts issuing partially vaccinated certificate to the citizens

ISLAMABAD – National Database and Registration Authority started issuing Covid vaccination certificates to people who have partially inoculated against the novel disease, a tweet of the country’s national database stated Wednesday.

‘You can now receive ‘Partially Vaccinated Certificate’ (1st Dose Certificate) from any NADRA Registration Centre (NRC) OR by applying online’, NADRA tweeted.

As per the latest update, the individuals can now get a ‘partially vaccinated certificate’ from any of the registration centres or by the online portal. Certificates will be issued through National Immunisation Management System (NIMS).

Earlier, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) approved issuing certificates to partially immunised citizens intending to travel foreign.

Pakistan facing vaccine shortage

The national immunization drive in the South Asian country comes to a halt amid a shortage of vaccines as supplies disrupted due to logistic challenges in wake of the lack of coordination between different bodies.

Reports in mainstream media cited that the shortage of Covid vaccines has been halted in a number of cities in Punjab, while the supply of Chinese doses are short as authorities only able to inoculate citizens for the second dose.

On Tuesday, many of the citizens at vaccination centres in the Punjab capital were sent back by the administration after being told that the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA)system is being updated and so vaccination has stopped and they will update about the resumption in a couple of days.

Some news channels reported that many of the cities got only three days of stocks left while camp established at the Lahore Press Club and the Pakistan Kidney and Liver Institute closed in wake of the alarming situation.

A local newspaper quoting an official of the National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination reported that crisis in parts of the South Asian country stemmed to exhaustion of Chinese and European vaccine stocks, compelling federal authorities to dispatch around 150,000 reserved doses in an emergency to meet daily requirements.

Meanwhile, the central authorities dispatched 100,000 doses of different vaccines to Sindh, including 90,000 doses of Chinese vaccines, and urged provincial authorities to divert vaccines from under-utilized vaccination centres. The health ministry official was quoted as saying that Pakistan is expecting one million doses of Chinese vaccines by the end of this week while around 12.5 million doses of AstraZeneca are set to receive by the end of June via the COVAX facility.

Soon after the reporting at the national level and public outcry, Prime Minister’s aide and Minister of State for National Health Services Dr Faisal Sultan cleared the air by refuting all ‘speculations’. Urging masses not to panic in this regard, Sultan claimed that Pakistan has more than two million doses in stock adding that the situation will improve by the end of this week.

Addressing a national presser in the country’s federal capital, the top health official said ‘the shortage is limited to mega vaccination centres and is only temporary’.

Justifying the lag in the national immunization drive, he said ‘there are more than 2,000 vaccination centres in Pakistan and the number of visitors varies in all, so there may be a shortage of vaccines at some places’.

Authorities’ hold more than two million doses of the Covid jabs, but he also recognized that ‘the process is critical and complex to manage the stock properly’.

Sharing the statistics from the country’s nerve centre on novel disease, he said more than 3 million Pakistanis have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19, and more than 6.2 million have received one dose. Sultan further claimed that Pakistan is among the top 30 countries in term of vaccination drive.

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