Pakistan obtains more anti-COVID jabs from China

According to PIA Country Manager for China, another plane of the national flag carrier to airlift an additional batch of 0.5 million doses of Sinopharm vaccine procured from China to Pakistan on Wednesday morning.

Last Sunday, PIA special flight transported a consignment of 500,000 doses of Chinese SinoVac injection to Islamabad.

According to official sources, Pakistan has already arranged 10 million more vaccines while 10 million more would available in June and a further 10 million in July.

Initially, the government had to deal with vaccination uncertainty and a shortage of jabs supplies and had limited shots for people aged 30 or over.

Islamabad received the first COVID-19 vaccine consignment after a military aircraft transported it from Beijing on February 1, 2021.

The Pakistani health authorities had launched a nationwide vaccination drive with around a million doses of Sinopharm vaccine donated by China, starting with older people and frontline healthcare workers, in March.

The drive began with a focus on the oldest people in the community, generally over the age of 80, and worked its way down.

The government has decided to run a massive vaccination drive across the country and inoculate 70 million doses to fight the pandemic.

So far, nearly 5.3 million people have been vaccinated.

Pakistan will start vaccinating citizens aged 18 and above from June 3, Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar announced.

Taking to Twitter, Asad Umar who also heads National Command and Operations Center (NCOC) wrote that NCOC has decided to start scheduling vaccination of registered 18 plus from June 03 (Thursday).

Pakistan has reported 1,771 new COVID-19 cases, taking the number of infections to 922,824, while 71 more people have succumbed to the deadly coronavirus.

Pakistan is presently experiencing the third wave of coronavirus which is said to be deadlier and more contagious than the previous two waves.

According to National Command and Operations Center (NCOC), around 1,771 cases of coronavirus were reported while 71 people succumbed to the disease in the last 24 hours, taking the total death toll to 20,850.

The total number of confirmed cases reached 922,824.

As many as 844,638 patients have recovered from the disease with 3,842 critical cases.