KARACHI: Sindh health department has suspended Dr Aneela Qureshi, a health official in Karachi, for allegedly violating the standard operating procedures (SOPs) to facilitate the vaccination against COVID-19 of PML-N leader Mohammad Zubair’s daughter and son-in-law.
As per the details, Sindh Health Minister Dr Azra Pechuho took notice of the incident after reports and photographs circulated on social media showing family members of an opposition politician getting inoculated. An inquiry committee under the supervision of Fayyaz Hussain Abbasi has been formed to probe the Covid vaccination matter and submit a report within three working days.
Strong criticism from centre
NCOC chief Asad Umar on Sunday said that the Sindh government has been told to ensure that the coronavirus vaccines are only administered to healthcare workers. “We have received complaints that the coronavirus vaccine is being given to close contacts in Karachi besides healthcare workers,” he said.
Umar said that the NCOC team, under the supervision of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s adviser on health Dr Faisal Sultan, held a meeting with the Sindh government’s representatives, where they were “firmly told to ensure that the vaccine is only given to healthcare workers”.
Former special assistant to the prime minister on health Dr Zafar Mirza has said that as a citizen, he is “furious” that Covid vaccines are being given to influential people at the cost of frontline health workers.
Talking to Twitter, he said: “This reflects elitism at its worst, where strong and influential [people] can get away with everything. I don’t find strong enough words to condemn this attitude. I hope that the cases will be properly investigated and responsible people will be exposed and appropriately punished.”
Pakistan reports 59 COVID-19 deaths, 1,037 cases in one day
Pakistan on Monday reported 59 deaths and 1,037 new cases of COVID-19 in a period of 24 hours. With these latest figures, the country’s total number of cases have surged to 555,511 and death toll to 12,026. According to the National Command and Operation Control (NCOC) data, there are 1,828 critical cases in the country while the number of active cases are still above 30,000. The data also showed that 1,260 coronavirus patients recovered during the last 24 hours. The total number of recoveries has surged to 511,502 while the recovery rate is 92.1 per cent.
