Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: With the rock solid support from Iron Brother China, Pakistan has vaccinated the majority of its citizens against the Covid pandemic.
China has stood with Pakistan right as the pandemic broke. Beijing gifted millions of vaccines to Pakistan.
Pakistan administered record 2.24 million Covid-19 vaccines in a single day, National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) head Asad Umar said.
“Another record set with 2.24 million vaccinations in a day. Last 4 days in a row we have vaccinated more than 2 million each day,” Umar, who is also the country’s planning and development minister tweeted.
He added: “Every 3 out of 4 Pakistani’s eligible for vaccination have received at least 1 dose. 58% are fully vaccinated. Well done Pakistan.”
Earlier, NCOC said Pakistan reported as many as 3,498 fresh cases of COVID-19 during the past 24 hours, lifting the tally of confirmed cases to 1,477,573.
A total of 58,077 samples were tested, out of which 3,498 turned out to be positive, it said, adding the infection rate was recorded at 6.02 per cent as compared to yesterday’s 7.1%.
Chinese vaccines have been most popular in Pakistan due to easy availability and results.
Last month, Pakistan cleared Chinese traditional herbal medicine for treating COVID-19, as the South Asian nation enters a fifth wave of the pandemic driven by the Omicron variant.
The Chinese medicine, Jinhua Qinggan Granules (JHQG) manufactured by Juxiechang (Beijing) pharmaceutical Co Ltd, is already being used in treatment of COVID-19 patients in China.
“Since it was tried on patients with different variants of COVID-19, we expect it to be effective on Omicron as on other variants,” Professor Iqbal Chaudhry, director of the International Center for Chemical and Biological Science (ICCBS) where trials were conducted, remarked.
The trials were conducted on 300 patients who were treated at home, and would work on mild to moderate COVID-19 cases, Dr Raza Shah, principal investigator in the trials, maintained, adding that the efficacy rate was around 82.67%.
