Pakistan to receive 4mn doses of Chinese vaccines in next four days: sources

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan is expected to receive four million doses of Chinese vaccines, Sinopharm and Sinovac, in the next four days, as per a report on Geo News. 

Seven hundred thousand doses of the Chinese vaccine Sinopharm arrived in Pakistan from China while another 1.3mn doses of the same vaccine are expected to reach the country  today (Sunday). 

As per sources in the Ministry of Health, Pakistan will receive 2mn doses each of Sinopharm and Sinovac in the next four days. 

Planes carrying two million doses of the Sinovac vaccine are expected to arrive in Pakistan on Monday and Wednesday, said sources. 

Pakistan is also expecting more doses of the UK vaccine AstraZeneca to arrive in the country.

Pakistan receives 2mn doses of Sinovac from China

On June 22, a special flight of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) PK-6852 airlifted two million doses of Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine from the Beijing Capital International Airport to Islamabad.

Sources had said around three million more doses of COVID-19 will be transported to Pakistan in the next 10 days.

The government aims at inoculating 70 million people by year's end.

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.

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

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

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

Now vaccines are available for people aged over 18 years.

Gap between shots for Chinese vaccines increased

The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) had earlier revised the guidelines for two-dose Chinese vaccines, increasing the gap between the doses to six weeks.

The two-dose SinoVac and Sinopharm vaccines were initially administered with a four-week gap which has now been increased to six weeks.

The Sindh government had said that those citizens who had already received one dose of Sinopharm, will still get their second dose after the earlier set 21-day gap. Similarly, those having received one dose of Sinovac, will get their second dose after four weeks, as was the earlier practice.

The provincial health department said that the new rule, of a six-week gap, applies to those who will get inoculated for the first time today onwards.