By Ajmal Khan Yousafzai
ISLAMABAD: The unpredictable hard times and unavoidable damages wreaked by the contagious disease of Covid-19 has brought almost all the developed economies across the globe on its toes who are being faced with numerous challenges to catch up the pace in ensuring immunity to the masses through vaccination.
China amid its hallowing success and might in the field of technological, economic and state-of-the-art medical advancement has once again stunned the entire globe in the field of medicine and microbiology by developing one of the most promising Coronavirus antidotes with above 70 percent efficacy and least encounters of side effects. The government of China has continued its support to ensure early Covid-19 vaccine availability to Pakistan on priority basis for ensuring successful execution of the latter’s national vaccination programme. China and Pakistan have been working hand in glove to overcome difficulties since the outbreak of the pandemic.
The government of Pakistan has also received the first batch of it’s purchased Chinese Covid-19 vaccines of CanSino and Sinopharm whereas it was provided around one million doses of SinoPharm in two different tranches of half a million doses by the Chinese government. Health Ministry Spokesperson Sajid Shah said that the first consignment of 500,000 doses produced by China’s Sinopharm reached the federal capital on February 1 while another batch of 500,000 doses of Sinopharm’s coronavirus vaccine from China reached on March 17 in Pakistan that helped the national immunisation programme across the country.
The vaccination process was initiated nationwide on February 3 for which the government had initially set up 189 adult vaccination centres in Punjab, 14 in Sindh, 280 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 44 in Balochistan, 14 in Islamabad, 25 in Azad Jammu and Kashmir and 16 in Gilgit-Baltistan. Sajid Shah said that the government had launched Covid-19 vaccination for the general public on March 10 while vaccinating its frontline healthcare workers followed by senior citizens, particularly people aged 65 years and above in different phases.
The vaccine is being provided to federating units in compliance with all health guidelines. The doses are transported by airplanes to Sindh, Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan to maintain the temperatures and save time, he stated. In February, the 3rd phase trials of the CanSino vaccine showed that it is 74.8% efficient in preventing symptomatic cases of Covid-19 in the country.
