ISLAMABAD: Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov today (Thursday) has announced that Russia will “soon” be supplying Pakistan with 150,000 doses of the Russian developed Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine.
“Russia has already supplied 50,000 doses Sputnik vaccine and another 150,000 will be delivered soon,” the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote on its official Twitter account.
???? #Lavrov: #Russia has already supplied 50,000 doses [of #SputnikV vaccine] to #Pakistan, another 150,000 will be delivered soon.
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“We are ready to try to help our Pakistani colleagues meet their needs using the available production capacity,” it added. The announcement came during a two-day visit by the Russian foreign minister to Islamabad, where he held wide-ranging talks with Pakistani civil and military authorities.
This was the first visit by a Russian foreign minister in almost a decade and came at a crucial juncture when the region is undergoing transformation with new alignments, putting stability at risk.
Pakistan’s private sector has already purchased 50,000 doses of the Sputnik V vaccine which are currently being sold commercially. Sputnik V is one of four vaccines approved for emergency use in Pakistan, in addition to those by China’s Sinopharm and CanSinoBio, and the AstraZeneca-Oxford University shot.
Pakistan has recorded more than 700,000 cases of COVID-19 and more than 15,000 deaths since the start of the pandemic, according to the latest tally from Johns Hopkins University.
