Pakistan cricket team to get booster shots as COVID-19 cases surge in country

• According to a source, the national cricket team players will be receiving shots of the Pfizer vaccine as a booster.
• Support staff will also receive the vaccine’s booster shot.
• Women's cricket team and their support staff already received booster jabs, source says.

As COVID-19 cases continue to surge in the country at an alarming rate, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has also decided to give a booster dose of vaccine to all the players, Geo News reported Thursday.

According to a source, the national cricket team players will be receiving the Pfizer vaccine as the third dose, while support staff will also receive the vaccine’s booster shot.

In the first phase, players and other officials will receive the booster jab in National High-Performance Centre (NHPC) tomorrow (January 7).

On the other hand, women cricketers and their support staff have already been vaccinated with the third dose of the vaccine.

It is worth mentioning here that Pakistan's coronavirus positivity ratio exceeded 2% in a single day for the first time since October 14 last year, as 1,085 new infections were detected during the last 24 hours, official data for Thursday morning had shown.

A day earlier, federal ministers urged Pakistanis to get vaccinated and revisit mask-wearing, as the cases of the new coronavirus variant, Omicron, have started spreading rapidly in the country.

"Omicron spreads at a fast pace, but it isn't lethal, however, do not think that nothing will happen to you if you get infected with the Omicron variant," National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) chief Asad Umar said.

In a message to people living in megacities, he said that from day one, the government had been informing that in heavily populated areas, coronavirus tends to spread very quickly.

In the last seven days, on average, Lahore and Karachi accounted for 60% of the entire country's cases, he said, urging people of the megacities to get jabbed as soon as possible.