How will coronavirus vaccines be administered in Pakistan?

• Pakistan to follow routine procedure of administering vaccine through injection
• The coronavirus vaccination drive will be done in three phases
• The vaccine will be distributed through Expanded Programme on Immunization

As the much-awaited coronavirus vaccination drive kicks off in Pakistan, many can breathe a sigh of relief that there is some hope against the infection which has killed more than 10,000 people in the country. 

However, some questions come to the mind: How will it be administered? Who will get it first?

The Ministry of National Health Services Pakistan on Tuesday, in a tweet, said that the country would follow the routine procedure of administering the vaccine through an injection.

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The ministry said that two doses of the vaccine will be provided to people by injecting it into the arm of a person. The doses will be administered with a gap of three to four weeks, according to the Ministry of National Health Services, Pakistan. 

Moreover, last month, Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan said that frontline health care workers would be the first to receive the vaccine.

In the next phase, the rest of the healthcare workers and people over 65-years of age will receive shots. In the next phase, people above the age of 60 and the population above 18 will be inoculated.

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Pakistan is going to distribute the vaccine through the Expanded Programme on Immunization (EPI), and the country is capable of inoculating its entire population, he said.

To streamline the process, the government has developed a software to track it. "As many as 400,000 health workers have registered in the resource management system."