Islamabad, April.1 (INP): “China’s support for Pakistan’s fight against the Covid-19 is highly commendable; Chinese health authorities have generously shared their experiences regarding Covid-19 with Pakistani health experts while vaccine chain supply in Pakistan started with Chinese vaccine donations,” Dr Faisal Sultan, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on National Health Services.

Dr. Faisal Sultan along with Pang Chunxue, Minister Counsellor of the Chinese Embassy received consignments of Sinopharm and CansinoBio Covid-19 vaccines on Wednesday, which arrived by a special plane at Pakistan Air Force Base Nur Khan, Chaklala PAF Airbase.

He said that Pakistan was in the process of vaccinating its populations and the campaign was initiated with the vaccines that China had gifted them.

“However, we have to vaccinate millions of people, so we are also purchasing our own vaccines as well; today we have received the first batch of purchased vaccines from China,” Dr Faisal added.

He said that the country’s frontline workers and the elderly have been vaccinated while Pakistan needs more doses now and in the future.

“The first batch of vaccines that we purchased arrived on this important occasion. Today, we have received 60,000 doses of Cansino vaccines while millions of doses will arrive in the coming months,” he said and  added “Cansino is very important to us because Pakistan was part of its clinical trials; the trials remained successful, on the basis of which we registered Cansino for emergency use in the country”.

“Today we also received half a million doses of Sinopharm; we are also awaiting the arrival of half a million doses tomorrow (Thursday); we bought these doses from China,” Dr Faisal said, adding that Pakistan would buy more Cansino vaccines in the months of May and June.

“We have already administered 0.8 million doses of vaccines,” he said and called on the public to follow the SOPs of Covid-19 and asked the elderly to register for the vaccinations.

Dr Sultan said Pakistan has so far received 1.7 million doses of Sinopharm vaccines with 60,000 doses of Cansino Bio while half a million doses of Sinopharm will arrive during next 24 hours.

“Multiple millions of doses would arrive and the procurement of vaccines will continue,” he said, adding one hundred million of Pakistani population is above the age of 18 and in principle all of them should receive vaccines.

INP/javed