More than 20m Pakistanis fully vaccinated against coronavirus: Asad Umar

• Pakistan has so far vaccinated at least 50 million people with first dose of coronavirus vaccine, says Federal Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar.
• Umar says country had set "daunting" target of vaccinating 70 million people at start of vaccination campaign.
• Expresses confidence over Pakistan's ability to "meet and surpass" target.

More than 20 million people in Pakistan are now fully vaccinated against coronavirus, announced Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar on Twitter Friday.

The planning minister, who is also the head of the National Command and Operation Centre, gave an update on the country's COVID-19 vaccination  status, expressing confidence that Pakistan will "meet and surpass" its vaccination target.

The minister said the country had set a "daunting target" in the early days of the vaccination campaign of vaccinating 70 million people by the end of this year.

"In the early days of the vaccination campaign we had set a daunting target of vaccinating 7 crore people by the end of this year," he wrote. 

He said he was happy to report that Pakistan has administered at least one dose of anti-coronavirus jabs to 50 million people.

Pakistan has administered at least 65,505,999 doses of COVID vaccines so far. Assuming every person needs 2 doses, that’s enough to have vaccinated about 15.1% of the country’s population.

During the last week reported, Pakistan averaged about 1,163,927 doses administered each day. At that rate, it will take a further 38 days to administer enough doses for another 10% of the population.

What is the current situation of coronavirus in Pakistan?

Pakistan reported a minor drop in the number of its active coronavirus cases for the third consecutive day Friday morning.

The country recorded 91,440 active cases, according to the latest stats released by the NCOC.

Meanwhile, the coronavirus positivity rate was 6.03%. Since August 24, Pakistan's positivity rate has been under 7% on 16 out of 18 days.

Another 83 people died from coronavirus in Pakistan, data by the NCOC showed. The daily death toll has been hovering around 100 for over a week.

The data revealed that 61,128 COVID-19 tests were conducted across the country in the last 24 hours, out of which 3,689 people tested positive for the infection.

The daily case count has mostly been hovering between the 3,000-4,000 range for close to a month now as the country continues its fight against the fourth wave of the pandemic.

Read the full daily coronavirus report on Pakistan here.