Daily Times

The government will start vaccinating people aged 30 and above against coronavirus on Saturday.

In a tweet, Minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar, who also heads the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), said: “In today’s (Friday) NCOC meeting it has been decided to open up vaccination for 30 years and older starting tomorrow. The messages for those who are being scheduled will go out today.” Meanwhile. 84 more people died of Covid-19 and 4,007 new cases have been reported in the country during the last 24 hours. According to the latest statistics, 62,238 tests were carried out during this period showing positivity ratio of 6.43 per cent.

The tally of deaths in the country now stands 20,171.

On the other hand, official death tolls from the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to be a “significant undercount”, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, estimating that the true figure of direct and indirect deaths could be two to three times higher. Presenting its annual World Health Statistics report, the WHO estimated that total deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 were at least 3 million or 1.2 million more than 1.8 million figure officially reported.

By May 20 2021, WHO statistics showed around 3.4 million people had died globally as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, although the real figure could be much higher, the WHO said.