Pakistan received on Wednesday its first tranche of Sinopharm vaccine procured through COVAX as it looks to curtail the spread of coronavirus by increasing its inoculation drive.
In a statement on Wednesday, the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) said that 976,782 doses of the vaccine landed in Islamabad while the remaining 5.1 million doses will arrive within the next four days.
"All will support the Government’s national vaccination drive, which recently hit the milestone of one million doses of vaccine administered in a day," UNICEF said.
Pakistan has been using Sinopharm, Moderna, Pfizer, CanSino and Sinovac vaccines to inoculate its population.
In July, Pakistan received 2.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccines as part of the COVAX global vaccine initiative. The vaccines were delivered to save lives and help Pakistan deal with the ongoing crisis.
Since May 8, a total of 8 million doses have been shipped to Pakistan including 2.4 million doses of AstraZeneca, 100,160 doses of Pfizer and 5.5m doses of Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, according to UNICEF Pakistan's press release.
Earlier, Ambassador of China to Pakistan Nong Rong met President Dr Arif Alvi and informed him that Beijing would provide six million vaccine doses this week, and 100 million doses by the end of the year.
During the meeting, Ambassador Nong also lauded the steps taken by Pakistan in successfully containing the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Pakistan receives 3 million doses of Moderna vaccine
Later, the ambassador tweeted that the first batch of vaccines was being shipped to Pakistan."Our commitment: making vaccines a global public good, and put Pakistan as our priority," Rong tweeted.
On August 7, Pakistan received two million doses of Sinopharm vaccines from China. Meanwhile, another batch of the CanSino vaccine is also expected to arrive in Pakistan in the next few days.
So far more than 39 million vaccines have been administered in Pakistan. As Pakistan speeds up its vaccination drive, it has so far administered over 38,722,200 doses of the coronavirus vaccine.
Pakistan picks up vaccination pace, administers highest number of Covid-19 doses in a day
Daily, thousands of people visit vaccination centres across the country for their first or second doses of vaccines. The government has also decided to bar unvaccinated people from travelling on trains from October 1.
Moreover, official quarters have also warned of blocking mobile phone numbers and National Identity Cards (NIC) if citizens do not get their inoculations registered.
Special Assistant to Prime Minister on National Health Services Dr Faisal Sultan on Monday tweeted that people can get second dose of vaccine anytime after the minimum time interval has passed and they should not wait for SMS reminder.
He added that the minimum time to wait for those getting Sinopharm is three weeks while for Sinovac and AstraZeneca it is four weeks.
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