IPEMC session to deliberate on closure of educational institutions postponed

ISLAMABAD: The session of the Inter-Provincial Education Ministers Conference (IPEMC) has been postponed in which the participants would deliberate on the closure of educational institutions amid Omicron concerns.

A meeting of the Inter-Provincial Education Ministers Conference (IPEMC) under the chair of Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood was scheduled today to decide on the closure of educational institutions.

The next date of the IPEMC session will be announced later.

Important decisions were likely to be taken in the IPEMC’s 34th session today as the participants will review the prevalent COVID situation in the country with respect to educational institutions in the presence of all education ministers.

The items on the agenda include the interprovincial consultation for timely provision of quality textbooks in the academic year 2022, interprovincial coordination regarding the timely provision of NOCs for textbooks and any other agenda with the permission of the chair.

In view of the surge in COVID cases, the federal government had earlier ruled out any possibility of imposing another lockdown in the country and it is likely that IPEMC would also go in favour of the continuation of regular classes.

However, the Sindh could have decided on shifting to the education plan of reducing the classes at the educational institutions due to Omicron outbreak.

Yesterday, Pakistan had recorded the highest number of daily Covid cases since three months as 2,074 infections were reported from across the country during the past 24 hours.

Pakistan had witnessed the highest daily Covid cases today since September 24 – 2021 in accordance with the statistics released by the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) on Wednesday.

Thirteen (13) deaths had been reported in a day that is also the highest since December 15 last year, taking the total number of mortalities to 28,987.

The positivity rate had reached up to 4.7 per cent, whereas, the recovery rate stood at 96.2 per cent. Overall 1,309,248 cases had been reported in Pakistan so far and 1,259,699 patients were recovered from the virus.

The spread of Omicron has also forced the federal and provincial governments to take special steps for expediting the vaccination process. However, the vaccination rate in Karachi, currently having the highest infection rate of Omicron variant, still stood at 40 per cent.

According to official data yesterday, 100,410,291 people have been administered the first dose of the Covid vaccine, whereas, 75,225,220 nationals were fully vaccinated followed by further instructions by the federal government to go for a third booster dose to get prevented from contracting Omicron infection.

A total of 163,648,656 doses of Covid vaccines have been administered in Pakistan so far.