Pakistan bans domestic air travel for unvaccinated people

Pakistan banned air travel for unvaccinated people on Sunday as the country recorded its highest daily coronavirus infections in more than three months amid a fourth wave of the pandemic.

The travel restrictions have been imposed to encourage people to get vaccinated, a Health Ministry official said. He said vaccine hesitancy was still an issue the authorities were struggling to deal with.

A surge of new coronavirus infections that is dominated by the Delta variant is once again putting pressure on the country's weak health care system.

The South Asian country recorded 5,026 new cases during the last 24 hours, the highest tally since April. More than 1 million people have been infected in Pakistan so far, and deaths have crossed the 23,000 mark, according to the national statistics.

The increase of positive cases prompted authorities to put virus hotspots under lockdown in more than 10 cities of the country's biggest Punjab province. Pakistan's most populous city Karachi, with over 20 million residents, went under a partial lockdown on Friday.

The government-run vaccination drive started in February and was initially slow, but the campaign has started picking up pace as more than 30 million people received at least one dose of the vaccine.

It took the country 113 days to administer the first 10 million doses, then 28 days to vaccinate another 10 million people and 16 more days to reach the 30 million mark, Planning Minister Asad Umar said.

Authorities have also asked public servants, teachers and students above 18 to get vaccinated by the end of August.