Pakistan launches crackdown against selling of fake Covid vaccination certificates

ISLAMABAD – The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) has launched a crackdown against people involved in making fake Covid-19 vaccination certificate, facilitating those who are avoiding state-run immunization drive.

Reports said that the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) has directed FIA to take action against the people involved in the illegal activity.

The action was taken after it surfaced that some officials of the health department in Karachi were misusing the online system to issue certificates to unvaccinated citizens. It also emerged that Rs2,000 was received for a certificate.

Last month, the government also launched an online app for online verification of the Covid-19 certificates.

FIA has reportedly arrested several persons involved in the issuance of fake certificates.

Pakistan’s daily COVID-19 numbers have been steadily decreasing over the past two days, with the positivity rate declining to 4.78 percent. According to the National Command and Operation Centre’s data, 2,714 new cases were recorded on wednesday morning.

After 56,733 COVID-19 tests were taken in the past 24 hours, 2,714 additional cases were discovered. The overall number of cases now stands at 1,212,809.

Daily counts are going lower, with active cases falling below 80,000 for the first time since early August. Currently, there are 77,532 active cases.

Another 73 individuals have died from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the total death toll to 26,938.

After 10,923 individuals recovered from the virus in the past 24 hours, the total number of people who have recovered has surpassed 1.1 million. Approximately 1,108,339 individuals have recovered as of today.

In Pakistan, COVID-19 infections are on the decline, with 3,406 new cases recorded on average each day. That’s 58 percent of the top, which was reached on June 17 with the highest day average ever recorded.

So far, Pakistan has given out at least 68,227,337 doses of COVID vaccination. Assuming that each individual requires two doses, it would be enough to vaccinate 15.8% of the country’s population.

Pakistan gave an average of 1,040,926 dosages per day over the latest week reported. At this pace, administering enough dosages for another 10% of the population will take another 42 days.