By Hina Kiyani
ISLAMABAD: Vice Chancellor, University of Health Sciences (UHS) Lahore, Dr Javed Akram has said that the Covid-19 should be taken as an awakening call to change our priorities at national level, especially by investing more to improve our healthcare system. This priority shift is the only way forward to revive the economy and ensure that our population is staying safe.
This was stated by him while sharing his views as a key speaker at the webinar ‘Myths and Misconceptions about Covid Vaccine’ organized by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI), as a part of its campaign ‘No one is safe until everyone is safe’ here on Tuesday. On the occasion, Dr. Javed Akram presented a detailed account of various vaccine trials conducted in Pakistan udder several collaborated efforts including 3 clinical trials with 18000 volunteers. He further said that (Z-F 2001) which is a discovery of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is also under trial whereas the Sputnik, Russian vaccine is also in the pipeline.
“We are also working on the mutation and variants of the virus and keep the data updated on University of Health Sciences mutation browser on daily basis,” he said while explaining that we are also doing trials on Chemosatate, which is a post exposure test. Pakistan is among the 23 countries where trials have conducted. It is welcoming that our initial trials have shown good efficacy results. He added further that many of the countries in the world are eying at getting their 75% of the population vaccinated to stop the local transmission. However, it is a big task for the country like Pakistan with 220 million population. While debunking various myths about the vaccination, Dr Akram said that it is untrue that vaccine change our DNA or cause cases of male Impotency. He further said that RNA vaccine is safe for the pregnant mothers and even the Hepatitis A, B, C, AIDS, and cancer patients should be vaccinated.
“Once you are vaccinated, it takes 28 weeks to create the anti-bodies neutralizing effects,” he said and added further that the vaccines as a huge blessing for the humanity and we need to take full advantage of it. He noted that emphasized that the recovered patient should also take vaccine, because the vaccine targets the binding sites of the viruses.
