Federal Govt to Use Punjab’s Fund to Procure COVID-19 Vaccines

According to details, the Punjab government will now return Rs. 850 million to augment the federal government’s efforts to purchase COVID-19 vaccine doses to immunize the masses in the ongoing countrywide vaccination campaign.

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Yesterday, SAPM on Health, Dr. Faisal Sultan, said that the second batch of Sinopharm’s Coronavirus vaccine consisting of 0.5 million doses from China will soon reach Pakistan.

Last week, 0.5 million doses of Sinopharm’s COVID-19 vaccine reached the country, allowing authorities to kick start a mass vaccination campaign in which healthcare workers are being inoculated.

Dr. Faisal added that 1 million doses of Sinopharm will vaccinate 0.5 million citizens.

Around 45 million citizens will be inoculated by the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines committed by GAVI while 20 million citizens will be vaccinated by China’s CanSino’s COVID-19 vaccine.

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CanSino’s vaccine has demonstrated 75% protection against symptomatic cases and 100% protection against severe infection without any side effects in the Pakistani subset during the multination phase-III clinical trials.

Dr. Faisal said that the four vaccines will cover 65.5 million out of the targeted 70 million Pakistanis that need to be vaccinated in order to break the chain of transmission of Coronavirus.

He added that the government has planned to cover the small difference of 4.5 million by allowing the private sector to import vaccines after registering them with DRAP.