-Pakistan reaches agreement with Pfizer for 13 million doses
-Qatar to provide one million doses of corona vaccine to
Pakistan
-27 deaths, 663 new cases reported across country
DM Monitoring
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan continues to record a decline in COVID-19-related deaths and new cases, as the country recorded 1.69% positivity rate over the past 24 hours.
According to data released by the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), 27 more people succumbed to the disease during this period, taking the nationwide death toll to 22,034.
Pakistan recorded COVID-19 positivity rate of 1.69 per cent as of the total 39,017 samples tested for the presence of the infection, 663 were declared positive. This brings the total number of confirmed cases in the country to 949,784. With 1,204 people getting their health back during the past 24 hours, the overall number of the recovered stands at 894,352. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, the country has carried out 14,187,441 tests to diagnose the deadly disease.
GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology said on Monday final results from a late-stage study of their monoclonal antibody confirmed it significantly reduced hospitalization and death among high-risk COVID-19 patients when given early in the disease.
The treatment, sotrovimab, received an emergency use authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in May, while the European Union’s drug regulator has also backed it. read more. The drugmakers also said on Monday the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has recommended sotrovimab to treat high-risk, non-hospitalized patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19.
Meanwhile, Pakistan has reached an agreement with Pfizer-BioNTech for supplying 13 million doses of the COVID-19 mRNA vaccine by the end of July 2021. An exact timeline was not yet available, health minister Faisal Sultan told media, but said the doses would arrive by the end of 2021, under an agreement the government has made with the manufacturer.
Similarly, Pakistan is also in the final stages of procuring 10 million doses of the Russian Sputnik V. Its shipment is likely to reach Pakistan by the end of the current month or the first week of July. Besides, Ambassador of Qatar Abdul Rehman bin Faisal Al Thani assured Speaker of National Assembly Asad Qaiser during a meeting that Doha will provider one million COVID Vaccine doses to Pakistan.
During the meeting, important issues of mutual interest, including bilateral relations, were discussed.
The Ambassador said that Qatar values its friendly and fraternal relations with Pakistan and wants to further strengthen the bilateral relations with Pakistan. Pakistan has adopted a better strategy to control the virus.
The Speaker of the National Assembly said that solidarity among the Muslim countries was necessary to address the challenges faced by the Muslim Ummah, adding that unity and solidarity among the Muslim Ummah was the need of the hour to raise an effective voice against Islamophobia. Both countries can achieve economic stability by exploiting their geographical importance, he added.
Meanwhile, a senior official of the health ministry confided to the publication that shortage of vaccines was the main reason behind enhancing the gap between the two doses and claimed: “that instead of decreasing efficacy, a delayed second dose could provide immunity.”
