The National Institute of Health (NIH) is considering reverting to using the name CanSino Bio for the Chinese single-dose coronavirus vaccine being produced at the institute.

120,000 doses of the Covid-19 vaccine have been packed at the NIH, while a launching ceremony is expected to be held by the end of May. For the first batch of 500 doses, the NIH used PakVac, but now it is considering using the name CanSino Bio on the remaining vaccine batches.

"There has been a change of mind and the vaccine would be called CanSino Bio as the Chinese are sensitive about the names of their products," an official of the NIH was quoted as saying on the Dawn.com website.

The vaccine made at the NIH with the help of China’s CanSino Biologics, has passed the rigorous internal QA testing.The institute will be able to produce three million doses per month that would help in significantly reducing Pakistan's dependence on other countries for Covid-19 vaccine.

As many as 2,724 new cases of the coronavirus were detected across Pakistan in the last 24 hours. 65 more people died from the virus, taking the death toll to 20,465.