-Pakistan becomes 1st country to receive Chinese Vaccine as gift
By Ajmal Khan Yousafzai
ISLAMABAD: A special Pakistan Air Force (PAF) plane with the first batch of COVID-19 vaccine doses land here early Monday morning after it departed from China last night.
China’s State Councilor and Foreign Minister, Wang Yi. during a phone call to Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi last week had promised to provide 500,000 doses of Covid-19 vaccine to Pakistan by January 31. Beijing had asked Islamabad to send an airplane to get the vaccines.
Later, Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Spokesperson Hua Chunying had also confirmed that in order to support the brothers and sisters in Pakistan, the Chinese government would provide a batch of vaccines as aid and would actively coordinate with the relevant Chinese enterprise to speed up export of vaccines to Pakistan.
The National Command and Operation Center (NCOC), which oversees Pakistan’s coronavirus response, had sent the special aircraft to bring the vaccine that Beijing had promised to provide.
The NCOC has taken necessary steps to store the vaccine in Islamabad and onward supply to various federating units particularly to Sindh and Balochistan through the air.
It has also set up a vaccine nerve center with the provincial and district level vaccine administration and coordination and adult vaccination centers.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, China and Pakistan have been working together to overcome difficulties. Pakistan has approved two foreign anti-COVID vaccines as of now, including the Chinese Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine, for emergency use in the country.
Pakistan plans to provide vaccines to frontline health workers and elderly people in the first phase.
Vaccine administration strategy: Last week, the NCOC unveiled an eight-step process for registration and inoculation once the vaccines became available. Umar had said at the time that the country’s Covid-19 vaccination drive would begin this week.
The forum said that an online portal — National Immunisation Management System (NIMS) — has been created which will be operated by the NCOC. Human interaction within the portal will be minimised to keep the system transparent.
In addition to NIMS, numerous Adult Vaccine Centres (AVC) have been established across the country which will be run by the National Vaccination and Administration Control Cell (NVACC). Coordination cells have also been established at provincial and district levels, the NCOC statement said.
AstraZeneca vaccine doses: Meanwhile, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan announced on Saturday that around seven million doses of AstraZeneca would also reach Pakistan in the first quarter of the current year.
In his tweet, the prime minister’s aide said: “Happy to share that in addition to the 500,000 doses of Sinopharm, almost 7 million doses of AstraZeneca to be made available in Q1 and given to the public free of cost! Pakistan’s vaccine drive starts next week, beginning with frontline healthcare workers.”
The development was also shared by Umar in his tweet, in which he stated that the government had rec¬eived a letter from Covax, saying that 17m doses of Astra¬Zeneca would be provided to Pakistan in the first half of 2021.
“We signed with Covax nearly 8 months back to ensure availability,” the minister tweeted.
Out of the 17m doses, seven million will be available by March. Pakistan has so far approved three coronavirus vaccines the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, the vaccine developed by Chinese state-owned firm China National Pharmaceutical Group (SinoPharm) and Russian-developed Sputnik V.
Officials say the authorisations will be reviewed quarterly with regard to safety, efficacy and quality.
