In a bid to build herd immunity against Covid-19, the Pakistan government has decided to inoculate children aged 12 years and above against the coronavirus, a senior minister announced on Tuesday.

In a tweet, Planning Minister Asad Umar said the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) – the apex decision-making body on combating the disease - has decided to "start vaccination of all 12 years and older".

“In today's NCOC meeting decided to start vaccination of all 12 years and older. The special drive will be run for vaccination at schools to make it easier for children to be vaccinated,” the minister tweeted.

Umar, who also heads the NCOC, said the government will send vaccination teams to schools to administer jabs to make access to vaccines easier.

A day earlier, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid said that the government had administered vaccines to over 70 million.

Last month, Parliamentary Secretary for National Health Services Dr. Nausheen Hamid said that Pakistan was on its way to vaccinate almost 80 million people of the country against the novel coronavirus by December 2021.

“Our target was to vaccinate 70 million Pakistanis by the end of this year that is now increased to 80 million. With the support of people, we will soon achieve this target,” she had said.

To meet the target, the government is mostly using Chinese vaccines -- Sinovac, Sinopharm, CanSinoBio -- donated by Beijing.

The first batch of vaccines provided to COVAX by China is being shipped to Pakistan.

China will donate USD 100 million to the COVAX Facility for distributing vaccines to developing countries.

Last month, the Chinese envoy to Pakistan Nong Rong said that China had listed Pakistan as its priority in COVAX -- a worldwide initiative aimed at equitable access to vaccines.

As a member of COVAX, Pakistan has also received vaccines from the US which has donated at least 15 million Pfizer vaccines so far. The last batch of 3.5 million Pfizer vaccines was sent to Pakistan earlier this month.

Russia also sent its first consignment of one million doses of Sputnik V Coronavirus vaccine early this month. Pakistan had asked Russia to send 5 million vaccines to the country in June.

(SAM)