The government decided on Sunday to relax Covid restrictions in four cities — Islamabad, Mirpur, Mandi Bahauddin and Gilgit - with effect from Monday as they have achieved the target of more than 60 per cent vaccination.

This was stated by federal minister for planning Asad Umar who posted this on Twitter.

Dawn reported on Monday that Punjab Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department Secretary Imran Sikander Baloch announced that “all the cities” with 60% vaccination would return to normalcy from today.

According to him, the 60% vaccination target had only been achieved in Mandi Bahauddin while it was 40% to 60% in Rawalpindi and Jhelum and 45pc in Lahore.

Baloch said social activities, including marriage ceremonies, dining, business activities, sports, gyms, cinemas and religious activities were allowed in the highly vaccinated cities, where educational institutes, offices and intra-city and intra-district public transport could operate at 100pc capacity.

Earlier, the NCOC chief also said the quicker districts achieve their vaccine targets, the easier it will be to lift curbs. He also urged people to demand this of their administrations so they can return to normalcy.

Pakistan says it is close to achieving 70 million people’s vaccination target by the end of 2021 as according to the NCOC 40 million are completely vaccinated.

According to the NCOC, more than 70 million people are partially vaccinated and after 754,680 doses of vaccine administered in the last 24 hours, the number of people vaccinated rose to 70.13 million.