ISLAMABAD: National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) head and Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar Tuesday announced to start vaccination of children aged 12 and above against the novel coronavirus across the country.

Taking to Twitter, Asad Umar said that the decision had been taken to vaccinate children aged 12 years and older during the NCOC’s meeting held earlier in the day.

“Special drive will be run for vaccination at schools to make it easier for children to be vaccinated,” he added.

The government had started to vaccinate persons aged 17 years and above from September 1.

Some of the guidelines announced by the NCOC earlier this month are:

• Immunocompromised individuals of 12 to 17 years will be vaccinated with the Pfizer vaccine.
• Individuals will be required to produce medical documents as proof of being immunocompromised
• The general public age group for vaccination has been lowered to 17 years.
• The Pfizer vaccine will be administered to the under 18 years age group.
• For people below 18 years of age, a Child Registration Certificate (B-Form) number will be used for registration in the National Immunisation Management System.

Pakistan records major drop in daily COVID-19 cases

Pakistan’s daily COVID-19 case count went below 1,500 for the first time in more than two months after it reported 1,400 fresh cases Tuesday morning, statistics by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) showed.

The country last reported less than 1,500 cases on July 23 at 1,425 cases.

The number of active cases, too, went to the lowest level since the last two months (July 20) at 49,968 cases. The active cases, along with the positivity rate, have been consistently falling since the last month with new recoveries surpassing fresh cases reported almost daily. Among the active cases, 4,015 patients are under critical care.

Another 41 people, meanwhile, lost their lives to the infection in the last 24 hours, pushing the national death tally to 27,638. This makes it the fourth consecutive day the country has reported less than 50 deaths in a single day.

With 2,042 recoveries in the same period, the tally for recoveries now stands at 1,164,219, NCOC data showed.

The positivity ratio stands at 3.17% across the country. Two days ago, Pakistan’s positivity rate went below 4% for the first time in almost four months.

COVID-19 infections are decreasing in Pakistan, with 2,059 new infections reported on average each day. That’s 35% of the peak — the highest daily average reported on June 17.