Unvaccinated Pakistanis to face several restrictions from October 1: NCOC

• Unvaccinated people will not be allowed in restaurants, shopping malls.
• They will also not be allowed to enter marriage halls, and travel — both abroad or domestically.
• NCOC makes vaccination compulsory for educational institutes' staff.

The National Command and Operation Centre on Tuesday announced several restrictions for unvaccinated citizens, as the government seeks to ramp up inoculations to beat the coronavirus pandemic.

NCOC, the forum that heads Pakistan's COVID-19 response, said that the restrictions on unvaccinated people would be applicable from October 1 — so only two days remain for people to get their coronavirus shots.

Without being vaccinated:

• You cannot enter restaurants.
• You cannot enter marriage halls.
• You cannot enter shopping malls.
• You will not be allowed to travel abroad or domestically.
• You cannot be part of an educational institute's staff.

The development follows NCOC deciding to vaccinate children aged 12 years old and above.

In a tweet, NCOC chief Asad Umar announced that the decision had been taken during an NCOC meeting today.

"Special drive will be run for vaccination at schools to make it easier for children to be vaccinated," he tweeted.

Later, the NCOC, in a tweet, said that two doses of the Pfizer vaccine would be administered to children above 12 years.

According to the NCOC website, Pakistan has so far administered 79.5 million vaccine doses — 57.8 million first doses and 27.3 million second doses.

Last week, the NCOC — over the observance of a decline in the transmission of the disease in districts where the prevalence of disease was high — decided to lift additional restrictions in five districts of Punjab and one district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Curbs were thus loosened in Lahore, Faislabad, Multan, Gujrat, Sargodha, and Bannu districts. However, the general coronavirus-related restrictions remain effective across the country till September 30.