Deadline Of 31st August Given To The Service Sector To Get Vaccinated

In recent news, Asad Umar, the Minister for Planning, Development, and Special Initiatives has stated that individuals working in the service sector should be fully inoculated by the 31st of August. According to him, failure to do will force the government to prevent them from working. 

The minister, who is also the head of the National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), asserted these directives, while in a press conference on Thursday. Dr. Faisal Sultan, the Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health, was also present alongside Umar. 

In the words of the Chief of NCOC, people employed in the service sector, inclusive of shop keepers, transport workers, NADRA employees, bankers, as well as any other job that requires direct contact with a large number of people, should get vaccinated against the coronavirus. 

He went on to reiterate that students aged over 18 should also be vaccinated before the 31st of August. He further added that people traveling by air from the 1st of August should have at least had the first dose administered. 

In addition, teachers at schools and colleges were instructed to have been vaccinated before the 1st of August. He informed that data collected in the last week indicated that 80% of the teachers across the country have received both the jabs of the vaccine. 

The minister announced that if people do not get vaccinated, they will not be allowed to work. He said that the lives of the people of the country, and the children, could not be endangered due to the stubbornness of some. He went on to explain that employees of the service sector interact with a large number of customers on a daily basis and could potentially cause the virus to spread significantly. 

According to Umar, the service sectors have been deemed to be high risk and have been sealed the most, whenever lockdown was imposed. Talking to the people, he told them that the government does not want their businesses to shut down. Rather, he said, the authorities want the citizens of the country to flourish in the new normal. He laid emphasis on the importance of vaccination if people do not want their earnings to stop. 

Dr. Sultan and the Chief of NCOC together went on to highlight the seriousness of the coronavirus situation in the city of lights. The SAPM revealed that cases are rising quickly in larger cities, which also includes Karachi. Due to an increase in the spread of infections, this has overburdened the hospitals in the city. 

Asad Umar highlighted that the federal government is in full support of the initiatives taken by the Sindh government for a lockdown. He promised that provisions will be made for all the necessary enforcements. But he pointed out that it is not viable to shut cities down in the long term. 

According to the minister, positivity rates had declined significantly near Ramzan, when stricter enforcements had been implemented. However, he recalled that they had shot back up as soon as the restrictions had been relaxed.