PESHAWAR: As the health department scales up efforts to vaccinate more and more people against coronavirus, the far-flung Upper and Lower Chitral districts have reported the highest inoculation rate in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

According to a government report, the first dose of Covid-19 vaccine has been administered to Upper Chitral’s 30 per cent targeted population of above 18 years of age, the highest rate by any district of the province.

Lower Chitral is second on the list with 15 per cent of the residents receiving the first dose of the vaccine.

The report said the province’s 46.88 per cent residents were above 18 years of age and the government was trying to vaccinate 19 million of them by the end of the current year.

According to it, Haripur’s Covid-19 vaccination rate is 10.5 per cent, Abbottabad nine per cent, Malakand 7.7 per cent, Peshawar 7.6 per cent, Kurram 6.5 per cent, Mardan 6.49 per cent, Kohat 6.32, Karak and Nowshera six per cent each, Mansehra 5.85 per cent, Upper Dir and Swabi 5.84 each and the rest below five per cent.

Virus claims 13 more lives in province

Upper Chitral has also outnumbered other districts regarding the administration of the vaccine’s second dose to the residents. Its 9.16 per cent people have so far received the second jab. It is followed by Lower Chitral (3.9 per cent) and Abbottabad (3.71 per cent). As for other districts, less than three per cent of the targeted people have received the second doze of the vaccine.

The officials said more than 500 vaccination centre had been administering the Covid-19 vaccine to the people with the health department increasing their numbers across the province.

They said the number of coronavirus-related hospitalisations had decreased during the last week.

The officials said the province, which had allocated 2,385 beds for the Covid-19 patients, had 653 cases admitted to hospitals and 262 of them were on low-flow oxygen, 364 on high-flow oxygen and 27 on ventilator.

They said 450 ventilators were unoccupied in hospitals.

Meanwhile, a health department said coronavirus claimed 13 more lives and affected 308 people in the province on Saturday.

According to a report of the department, four deaths were reported in Peshawar, three in Swat, two in Swabi, one each in Abbottabad, Mardan and Swat.

Peshawar recorded 54 new cases, the most in the province by any district. It was followed by Karak with 38 cases, Upper Dir 33, Haripur 19, Buner 17, Mansehra and Abbottabad 16 each, Mardan 13 and Swat 10.

The Covid-19 positivity rate continued to decline with Swat reporting 3.4 per cent, Peshawar 3.2 per cent and Charssada 2.9 per cent and other high-risk districts, including Mardan, Abbottabad, Swabi and Nowshera, less than one per cent.

The department said the province had so far recorded and 4,216 coronavirus-related deaths and 135,877 cases.

Of the cases, 128,055 have recovered from the virus and 235 of them were reported during the last 24 hours.

A total of 9,678 coronavirus tests were conducted in the province during the last 24 hours.

The department said the province had 2,806 active cases and that more than 93 per cent of the patients had so far recovered from the virus.

Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2021