Pakistan has on Monday (today) approved authorized China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, making it the second vaccine to get local approval.
According to sources, the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) has approved the Sinopharm vaccine for emergency use across the country.
The decision was taken in meetings held between January 14 and 18 after reviewing vaccine results data submitted by the National Institute of Health (NIH).
The development allows federal and provincial governments, and the private sector to import the Chinese vaccine.
Sinopharm, a state-run Chinese firm, is developing two COVID-19 vaccines. Pakistan will purchase 1.2 million doses of the corona vaccine from China.
Moreover, Pakistan is also running phase III clinical trials of another Chinese vaccine from CanSino Biologics’, led by the National Institute of Health.
The government of Pakistan has granted permission on Saturday to use Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine (AZD1222) in an emergency situation.
Earlier in December 2020, Federal Minister for Science and Technology Chaudhry Fawad Hussain said Pakistan will purchase 1.2 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from China’s Sinopharm.
On December 30, Sinopharm announced that phase III trials showed the vaccine was 79% effective.
Coronavirus Situation in Pakistan
Pakistan has reported 46 more coronavirus-related deaths in past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll to 10,977.
According to the latest statistics of the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) the COVID-19 has claimed 46 more lives and 1,920 fresh infections were reported.
In the past 24 hours, as many as 1,589 patients have recovered from the virus in a day and 2,348 patients are in critical condition.
The total count of active cases is 34,986.
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