Sindh starts vaccinating frontline healthcare workers against Covid-19

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah, along with provincial health minister Dr Azra Pechuho, inaugurated the first Covid-19 vaccination campaign of the province at the Ojha Campus of the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS) in Karachi on Wednesday.

The first coronavirus vaccine was administered to Dr Tanveer Ahmed, Dr Anila Sadaf Mengal and Dr Sadam Hussain. Health secretary Kazim Jatoi, Chinese Consul General Li Bijian, Project Director EPI Dr Akram Sultan, officials from the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), Vice Chancellor DUHS Prof Saeed Quraishy and others were also present on this occasion.

The inoculation of frontline healthcare workers also commenced at other vaccination centres of Karachi, including Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre (JPMC), where Executive Director Dr Seemin Jamali encouraged health workers to come forward and get themselves immunised.

Speaking at the inaugural ceremony at the DUHS Ojha campus, he chief minister said that being a nuclear country Pakistan should have launched the drive much earlier, but thanks to the Chinese government,‘finally we have made it”.

"We are a nuclear power and were running from pillar to post to arrange the vaccine,” he deplored and said Pakistan should have procured it much earlier. He urged the federal government to talk to other countries and procure more vaccines so that a mass campaign could be launched. He said the federal government had been saying that the vaccine was coming from this country and that country, but finally China, being the best friend of Pakistan, came to help and provided our country a vaccine.

Pakistan has received 500,000 doses of the Sinopharm vaccine from the Chinese government. “We, as a nation, are thankful to China’s government. The Sindh province has received the first consignment of 83,000 doses for frontline healthcare Workers, and the second consignment for these 83,000 frontline healthcare workers will be received in the second week of February 2021.”

The CM said there were a total of 320,000 healthcare workers in the province, and 180,000 of them were frontline healthcare workers. “Therefore, we would have to arrange the doses accordingly,” he said and added in the first phase, his government was going to start a campaign in three major cities of Sindh, Karachi, Hyderabad and Shaheed Benazirabad, due to a high positivity rate of Covid-19 cases there.

Shah hoped that the vaccination drive would help stop further transmission of the disease. In first phase, Sindh has established 15 adult vaccination centres in its six divisions.

“We will vaccinate all the frontline healthcare workers, whether they are from government hospitals or private hospitals,” the chef minister said and added that later the entire population would be vaccinated at government expense.

He remarked that his government had always led in the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, and the credit went to the frontline healthcare workers. “Alhamdolillah, we have managed both waves of Covid-19 with the minimum loss of lives and the economy,” he said and added that now people had started coming back to normal lifestyle and schools had opened.

The health system had strengthened in the province, and the infrastructure of hospitals had become better remarkably. “At last, it is reiterated that the pandemic has not yet gone. It is our responsibility to follow the SOPs, wear masks and maintain social distancing.”

Health Minister Dr Azra Pechuho said the department was trying to vaccinate all healthcare workers by the end of February. She added that with the initial consignment, 78,000 frontline workers currently working in the Covid wards would be inoculated.

She requested all Pakistanis to get vaccinated and said it was our national duty to get vaccinated to save the people around us. After visiting the vaccination centre at the Khaliq Dina Hall in Karachi, Dr Pechuho said that because the census done by the federal government was not accurate, some difficulties could be faced in the campaign; however, the province would take help from Nadra’s data.

The virus was mutating on a daily basis, and it was therefore important to vaccinate the people as soon as possible, she said, adding that people who had recovered from Covid-19 also needed to get vaccinated.