ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan has said more than 400,000 health workers have been registered for vaccination in the first phase across the country.
Participating in an online workshop pertaining to Health in covid-19, Dr Faisal said China has gifted half-million doses of the vaccine to Pakistan, which will be made available to the people free of cost.
Dr Sultan said in the first phase, two categories of people would be administered the vaccine – the frontline healthcare workers and people over 65 years of age.
He informed, “There are seven million people in the age bracket of 60 and 65 years who will be vaccinated in the second phase along with the remaining healthcare professional.”
Dr Faisal Sultan stressed the need for adhering to precautionary measures to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic. He urged the media to play its due role in creating awareness in this regard.
Earlier, Dr Faisal Sultan said AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine had been approved for emergency use in Pakistan making it the first coronavirus vaccine to get the green light for use in the South Asian country.
Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) granted emergency use authorization to AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine, the country’s health minister said.
Pakistan, which is in the midst of the second wave of coronavirus infections, Dr Faisal said it would procure more than a million doses of Sinopharm’s vaccine, but the Chinese vaccine has not yet been approved by the DRAP.
Pakistan is in the process of speaking to a number of vaccine makers, and Sultan said the country could get “in the range of tens of millions” of vaccine doses under an agreement with China’s CanSinoBio.
The vaccine company’s Ad5-nCoV COVID-19 candidate is currently nearing completion of phase III clinical trials in Pakistan.
