ISLAMABAD: Pakistan will receive another batch of over a million COVID-19 vaccine doses from China next week.
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health said in a tweet that the country has placed orders for the purchase of one million doses of SinoPharm and 660,000 doses of CanSino vaccines from China which will be received within a few days.
He said several million additional doses are in the pipeline and will be delivered in April. It may be mentioned that Pakistan has already received three batches of SinoPharm vaccine.
The development came amid reports that sluggish vaccination campaign is likely to take a further hit, following the delay in the supply of 17 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine being provided by the WHO-led COVAX program for developing countries.
The promised vaccines were slated to be received by the end of March. But India’s Serum Institute, which is supplying the doses to the world health body, has diverted supplies to meet domestic requirements.
Pakistan is currently vaccinating frontline healthcare workers and senior citizens using Sinopharm doses donated by China. The number of coronavirus cases reached a nine-month high in the past week.
Dr Faisal Sultan on Sunday said that the current wave of COVID-19 in Pakistan has the potential to be worse than the first one which struck the country in the summer of 2020.
