Thursday, 27 May, 2021 I 15 Shawwal, 1442 I Rs 15.00 I Vol XI No 326 I 12 Pages I Islamabad Edition
Covid-19 vaCCination drive opened to all adults as third peak slows down g
2,724 NeW INFecTIoNS, 65 deAThS ANd 4,686 recoverIeS recorded IN 24 hoUrS
ISLAMABAD
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stAff report
he government opened up the coronavirus vaccination campaign to everyone aged 19 or older, Minister for Planning and development Asad Umar announced Wednesday, as targeted restrictions brought new daily infections down. “In today’s Ncoc [National command and operation centre] meeting we decided to open up vaccination registration for all 19 years and above. This registration will start from tomorrow [Thursday],” the minister, who also heads the Ncoc, said in a tweet. “So now registration will be open for the entire national population which is approved by health experts for covid vaccination,” he added. The government launched a nationwide vaccination drive, starting with older people and frontline healthcare workers, in March. The drive began with a focus on the oldest people in the community, generally over the age of 80, and worked its way down. Battling a third peak of the virus, the health
department began the campaign with chinese Sinopharm and canSino jabs. Private hospitals in major cities are also using the russian Sputnik-v vaccine that has been imported by a local pharmaceutical company. Initially, the government had to deal with vaccination hesitancy and a shortage of vaccine supplies and had limited shots to people aged 30 or over. But with purchases from china and allocations from the World health organisation and the GAvI vaccine Alliance, the government has now secured more than 18 million doses and is keen to get them out into the population. The health authorities have administered 5.3 million vaccine doses with supplies from three chinese companies — Sinopharm, Sinovac and canSinbio — and the oxford-AstraZeneca shots. NEW CASES: The nation has registered more than 900,000 coronavirus infections and some 20,465 deaths. on Wednesday, the total caseload of active covid-19 cases reached 60,268 with 2,724 new infections and 4,686 recoveries in the last 24 hours. 65 people died of coronavirus-related
complications on Tuesday, 58 of whom were under treatment in hospitals and seven elsewhere, the latest update issued by the National command and operation centre said. Most deaths occurred in Punjab, followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. of the deceased, 23 people under treatment on ventilators. 4,242 covid-positive patients were under treatment in critical care units nationwide. Meanwhile, the transmission rate was recorded at 4.61 percent on Tuesday. The ratio is the percentage of total positive samples detecting in every 100 tests. According to Johns hopkins Bloomberg School of Public health, the positivity rate will be higher if the number of positive tests is higher, or if the number of total tests is critically low. A higher contagion rate suggests higher transmission of the disease. The maximum number of ventilators were occupied in four major cities: Lahore 44 percent, Multan 69 percent, Bahawalpur 38 percent and Faisalabad 36 percent. The maximum oxygen beds (alternate oxygen providing facility other than ventilator administered as per the medical requirement of the patient) was also occupied in four cities: Gujranwala 45 percent, Swabi 44 percent, Peshawar 38 percent and Multan 57 percent. Some 517 ventilators were occupied elsewhere in the country while no covid-positive person was on a ventilator in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Gilgit-Baltistan and Balochistan. 59,076 tests were conducted nationwide on Tuesday, including 18,132 in Sindh, 25,245 in Punjab, 7,859 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 4,961 in Islamabad, 1,410 in Balochistan, 459 in GB, and 1,010 in AJK. 827,843 people have completely recovered from the disease, taking the recovery ratio to over 90 percent. Since the pandemic outbreak, a total of 908,576 cases were detected, included the dead, recovered and under-treatment patients: 18,940 in AJK, 24,733 in Balochistan, 5,516 in GB, 80,662 in Islamabad, 130,644 in KP, 336,315 in Punjab and Sindh 311,766. About 20,465 deaths have been recorded since the outbreak of the disease in February last year.
Taliban warn departing US against new military bases in region ISLAMABAD Agencies
The Taliban on Wednesday warned the departing US military against setting up bases in the region and Pakistan has already vowed no American bases will be allowed on its territory. The government also said drone strikes from home soil were also a non-starter. The statements come amid speculation the United States, as it withdraws the last of its 2,500 to 3,500 soldiers from Afghanistan, will want a nearby locale from which to launch strikes against militant targets. The warning also comes during stepped-up efforts to jumpstart stalled peace talks
between the government and the Taliban, possibly in Turkey. Both Pakistan and Qatar have been pressing the Taliban to attend talks in Turkey. UN-sponsored talks were to have been held last month in Turkey but the Taliban refused to take part. Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Tuesday told Senate the country would not allow American bases on its territory. “Forget the past, but I want to tell the Pakistanis that no US base will be allowed by Prime Minister Imran Khan so long he is in power,” he said. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Pakistan opened four air bases to the US-led coalition to aid in its efforts in Afghanistan to hunt down the al-
Qaida perpetrators of the attacks and unseat the Taliban rulers who had given them a safe haven. In his April speech announcing an end to America’s “forever war,” President Joe Biden said Washington would hold the Taliban and the government to its commitments to ensure Afghanistan could not again be used as a staging arena to attack the American homeland or its allies. “We will not take our eye off the terrorist threat,” said Biden. “We will reorganise our counterterrorism capabilities and the substantial assets in the region to prevent re-emergence of a terrorist threat to our homeland over the horizon.”
CONFIRMED CASES: Coronavirus in
908,576 RECOVERED:
pakistan SINDH:
CONTINUED ON PAGE 05 LAST UPDATED AT 7:38 AM ON MAY 26, 2021
DAY'S DEATH TOLL:
NEW CASES:
65 2,724
PUNJAB:
ISLAMABAD: AJK/GB:
827,843
311,766
336,315
DEATHS: 20,465
KP:
130,644
BALOCHISTAN:
24,733
80,662
18,940/5,516
Govt’s review plea against Justice Isa case verdict turned down ISLAMABAD stAff report
The government’s review petition against the Supreme court’s judgement in the Justice Qazi Faez Isa case was turned down by the apex court’s registrar on Wednesday, as the office said that one case could not be reviewed twice. reacting to the development, the Ministry of Law and Justice issued a statement, wherein it said that the government “preferred a curative review Petition on which certain objections were raised by the office of the Supreme court”, adding that the petition “shall be re-filed in due course of time” in accordance with the law, after addressing the registrar office’s objections. Last month, the apex judicial body set aside the court’s previous order directing the Federal Board of revenue to hold an inquiry into the properties held by the senior judge’s wife and children in the United Kingdom. concluding the nearly two-year-long legal saga, the Sc, by a majority of six to four, had on April 26 overturned its June 19, 2020, majority judgement that required ver-
ification and subsequent findings by the tax authorities of three foreign properties in the name of the wife and children of Justice Isa. The presidential reference against Justice Isa — in line to become the chief justice on September 18, 2023, for 13 months — was already thrown out by the Sc as “invalid” in June last year. The reference filed by the government in May 2019 had alleged that Justice Isa acquired three properties in London on lease in the name of his wife and children between 2011 and 2015, but did not disclose them in his wealth returns. Through his petition, Justice Isa had pleaded before the court that the powers that be wanted to remove him from his constitutional office by hook or by crook. President Arif Alvi, he had claimed, did not form his own independent opinion before the filing of the reference against him. reportedly, days after its judgement on the review petitions, the Supreme Judicial council, headed by chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed, decided not to proceed any further against Justice Isa in the light of the April 26 10-judge Sc verdict.