Asad urges frontline workers to register for Covid-19 jabs.

ISLAMABAD -- Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar has appealed to all frontline healthcare workers to register to receive the vaccine which the government said would be given free to all in the country.

Pakistan began its Covid-19 vaccine drive on February 2, with more than 400,000 doctors and frontline healthcare workers, teachers, and social workers receiving the shots in the first phase because they run the highest risk of exposure to the contagious disease.

After that, the shots will be provided to citizens over the age of 65, who generally face a higher mortality risk from the virus.

Asad, as per a statement issued by the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC), said that the government will take every measure to ensure the safety of medics. 'Frontline workers are our priority,' said the minister, who also heads the NCOC.

Cases have come down in recent months. In the last 24 hours, the nation documented 1,165 fresh infections of the coronavirus after conducting 33,196 tests, receiving back a transmission rate of 3.51 per cent.

Despite passing through two waves of Covid-19, Pakistan has yet to fully utilise its testing capacity of 59,981, with daily testing significantly below numbers proposed by global health experts.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the country's testing policies only record the most symptomatic patients - a belief substantiated by a Punjab government official as the 'most efficient use of resources.'

Pakistan received its first tranche of the Sinopharm jabs, given by China as a 'gift', earlier this month. The shipment marked the first shots to be imported into the country where more than 565,989 cases of the disease have been reported since the outbreak in February last.

In addition, the government is due to receive a further 1.1 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine by the end of this month, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had announced last month.

Separately, Special Assistant to Prime Minister on National Health Services Dr Faisal Sultan announced that the government has secured 17 million doses of AstraZeneca's vaccine through the WHO's COVAX initiative. Of these, he said, about seven million doses will be available in the first quarter of the year and the rest by the end of 2021.

COVAX is a global program to vaccinate people in poor and middle-income countries against the pandemic. The plan aims to deliver at least two billion free vaccine doses by the end of 2021 to...