A special Pakistan Air Force (PAF) plane has arrived from Beijing in Islamabad on Monday with around half a million doses of coronavirus vaccine gifted by China.

In a tweet, Special Assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan (SAPM) on Health Dr Faisal Sultan announced the arrival of the first tranche of Sinopharm vaccine from China. The SAPM thanked China and said he was grateful to the neighbor and everyone who made this happen.

He continued that the National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) and provinces played an instrumental role in tackling coronavirus.

"I salute our frontline healthcare workers for their efforts & they'll be first to get vaccinated," the SAPM tweeted.

Earlier, in a tweet, Minister for Planning Asad Umar said the vaccine was being loaded on to the PAF plane and the vaccination process would begin in the next few days.

The NCOC has put all measures in place for the storage of the vaccine in Islamabad and its transfer to other federating units, particularly Sindh and Balochistan by air. In the first phase, the frontline healthcare workers will be vaccinated. Over 400,000 health professionals have applied for the vaccination.

"As 400,000 healthcare workers have registered themselves, it has therefore been decided that instead of considering the population of the federating units, the number of registered healthcare workers would be considered before dispatching the vaccine. In this way, the vaccine can be dispatched for 30pc, 40pc or 50pc of the registered healthcare workers," Umar said.