Urdu News

The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan on Monday gave emergency approval for Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine — and now the local population can be inoculated with it. The DRAP Registration Board approved the vaccine's use for children above 12 years of age, thus becoming the first vaccine that can be administered to children in Pakistan. "This vaccine will be administered to people with low immunity, including, pregnant women and aspiring pilgrims (hajjis) who are above 40,". More than 100,000 doses of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine had arrived in Pakistan through the COVAX facility, United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) Pakistan had said on Friday. The doses had reached Islamabad Friday morning with the help of UNICEF, it said in a statement on Facebook. UNICEF had said that a consignment containing diluents as well as syringes is expected in the next two days. DRAP officials said influential people have started seeking inoculations for Pfizer...

The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) decided on Monday to start scheduling Covid-19 vaccination of citizens above 18 years of age from Thursday. In a message on his official Twitter handle, Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar, who also heads the NCOC, said: “In today’s National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) meeting it was decided to start scheduling vaccination of registered 18 plus from thursday the 3rd of june.” “With this step the vaccination of all eligible age groups would carried out,” he said, appealing to people to sign up for vaccination as soon as possible. On May 27, the government started registering citizens aged 18 and above for vaccination against Covid-19. People in the age bracket of 19 to 30 years were asked to register themselves by sending CNIC to 1166. On Sunday, Asad Umar said that Pakistan set a new record of most vaccinations in a day after nearly 400,000 people received COVID jabs on Saturday. Taking to Twitter, Asad Umar said th...

Sinovac’s CoronaVac vaccine reduces coronavirus mortality by 97 percent, according to early results of the immunization campaign in Uruguay, which relies heavily on the Chinese vaccine. In people who had received two doses, it reduced infection with the coronavirus by 57 percent and intensive care admissions by 95 percent, said a report by the health ministry of the South American nation. Compared to other vaccines in use, there have been few scientific publications on the efficacy of CoronaVac, produced by Chinese firm Sinovac, and widely divergent reported results. Coronavac is nevertheless widely used in China and in some two dozen other countries. Chile reported last month that early results from its immunization campaign showed CoronaVac to be 67 percent effective at preventing symptomatic Covid-19 and 80 percent at preventing death. Trial results with CoronaVac in Brazil showed efficacy of about 50 percent in preventing symptomatic infection, while Turkish data said it was...

The WHO’s European director warned Friday that the Covid-19 pandemic won’t be over until at least 70 percent of people are vaccinated, while deploring that the vaccine rollout in Europe is still “too slow”. “The pandemic will be over once we reach 70 percent minimum coverage in vaccination,” the World Health Organization’s regional director for Europe Hans Kluge told AFP in an interview. Kluge also said that one of his main worries was the increased contagiousness of new variants of the novel coronavirus. “We know for example that the B.1617 (Indian variant) is more transmissible than the B.117 (British variant), which already was more transmissible than the previous strain,” Kluge said. According to the Belgian doctor, speed is “of essence” in pandemic. “Even when WHO declared a pandemic, many countries were still waiting, we lost valuable time.” While the regional director, who has held the position since February 2020, lauded calls for solidarity he stressed that a speedy ro...

Vaccination against Covid-19 of Pakistanis aged 30 years and above started today (Saturday), according to the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC). “Vaccination for 30 -40 years begins today! Register yourself by sending CNIC to 1166. On receiving SMS, visit the mentioned vaccination center on given date (or afterwards) and get vaccinated,” the NCOC tweeted. Taking to his official Twitter account earlier, Planning and Development Minister Asad Umar, who heads the NCOC, announced that, “In today’s National Command Operation Center (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.” The NCOC said a total of 1,193,441 people have been fully inoculated against Covid-19 while 2,631,873 partially vaccinated. As many as 176,907 citizens got vaccinated in the past 24 hours. A total of 4,956,853 doses have been administered as of May 22. from Health - SUCH TV ht...

Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health Dr Faisal Sultan dismissed on Tuesday reports regarding the shortage of the Sinopharm vaccine. Addressing a press conference in Islamabad, the prime minister’s aide said reports about the non-availability of Sinopharm vaccine were “baseless” and assured that it was the health authorities’ priority to administer the vaccine’s second dose to persons who had received a Sinopharm shot the first time. However, he explained, since the Sinopharm vaccine may be reserved for second doses in case of a shortage, those visiting a vaccination centre for their first dose may be administered another vaccine. “The priority will always be that a person is administered both the doses of the same vaccine,” Dr Sultan said, adding that significant measures had been taken for the purpose. He also rejected reports regarding the side effects of the AstraZeneca vaccine, terming them “misinformation” and “misleading”. “The vaccine is in use in a nu...

Pakistan’s armed forces have finalized a deal of two million doses of the Russian vaccine of coronavirus ‘Sputnik V’, reported on Tuesday. The first consignment of 2,00,000 doses of Sputnik V has been present at the Abu Dhabi airport to be transported to Pakistan. An aircraft of Pakistan Air Force (PAF) will airlift the first batch of the Russian vaccine from Abu Dhabi to the country, according to sources. Recently private hospitals in major cities of the country had started inoculation with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine imported by a pharmaceutical company. Pakistan in its coronavirus vaccination drive mostly used vaccines imported from China. The country on Sunday received another consignment of COVID-19 vaccine from China comprising of 1.2 million doses. The Ministry of Health received a batch of 10,00,000 doses of the SinoVac and 200,000 jabs of the CanSino vaccine procured from China. The sources further shared that another batch of two million COVID vaccine-SinoVac will reac...

The World Health Organization issued a grim warning on Friday that the second year of Covid-19 was set to be "far more deadly", as Japan extended a state of emergency amid growing calls for the Olympics to be scrapped. "We´re on track for the second year of this pandemic to be far more deadly than the first," said WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. The mood also darkened in Japan where the coronavirus state of emergency took in another three regions just 10 weeks before the Olympics, while campaigners submitted a petition with more than 350,000 signatures calling for the Games to be cancelled. With Tokyo and other areas already under emergency orders until the end of May, Hiroshima, Okayama and northern Hokkaido, which will host the Olympic marathon, will now join them. Japanese public opinion is firmly opposed to holding the Games this summer. Swiss tennis great Roger Federer said Friday that "what the athletes need is a decision: is it ha...

People under 40 years of age cannot use the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine, Pakistan's government has announced under its new guidelines for the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. The restriction for people under 40 years of age is irrespective of gender. Another change in guidelines is that the interval between doses will be 12 weeks instead of a range of 8-12 weeks mentioned earlier. These two changes were confirmed by Health Director-General Dr Rana Muhammad Safdar. They have been made on recommendation by an expert committee. Dr Safdar said the two changes will lead to operational ease. The guidelines, however, will remain interim, he said, as new data from around the world keeps pouring. International guidelines on the use of coronavirus vaccines are rapidly changing on the basis of new data and research, Dr Safdar said, adding that if a need is felt, guidelines for AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine use would be reviewed again. “All decisions are evidence-based to...

Famed Pakistani actress Sumbul Shahid passed away after losing her battle with Covid-19. According to her sister Bushra Ansari, the veteran actress, who tested positive one month prior, was undergoing treatment in Lahore where she was placed on a ventilator. Bushra had appealed to her fans to pray for her ill sister's recovery as her condition worsened. The star was known for her roles in many dramas like Malika-e-Aliya, Ishqaaway and Takay Ki Ayegi Baraat. from Entertainment - SUCH TV https://ift.tt/3eq6mX4 https://ift.tt/3h5ebmx admin.web@suchtv.pk (Web Desk)

A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying four astronauts back to Earth splashed down off Florida early on Sunday in Nasa’s first nighttime ocean landing in more than 50 years. The crew reported they were feeling well after their arrival back on Earth following a nearly six-month mission aboard the International Space Station, Nasa said. The capsule splashed down at 2:56am in the dark in the Gulf of Mexico off Panama City after a six-and-a-half-hour flight from the ISS, night-vision images relayed by Nasa’s WB-57 high-altitude research aircraft showed. Teams aboard the Go Navigator recovery ship retrieved the capsule and hoisted it onto the deck about half an hour later. It was the first nighttime splashdown for Nasa since the crew of Apollo 8 arrived in the Pacific Ocean on Dec 27, 1968. Commander Michael Hopkins was the first to emerge after the hatch was opened, doing a little jig as he set foot on deck, followed shortly after by fellow Nasa astronaut Victor Glover. “On behalf of...

AOL and Yahoo are being sold again, this time to a private equity firm. Verizon will sell Verizon Media, which consists of the pioneering tech platforms, to Apollo Global Management in a $5 billion deal. Verizon said on Monday that it will keep a 10 per cent stake in the new company, which will be called Yahoo. Yahoo at the end of the last century was the face of the internet, preceding the behemoth tech platforms to follow, such as Google and Facebook. And AOL was the portal, bringing almost everyone who logged on during the internet’s earliest days. Verizon had hoped to ride the acquisition of AOL to a quick entry into the mobile market, spending more than $4bn on the company in 2015. The plan was to use the advertising platform pioneered by AOL to sell digital advertising. Two years later, it spent even more to acquire Yahoo and combined the two. However, the speed at which Google and Facebook have grown dashed those hopes and it became clear very quickly that it was unlikel...