ISLAMABAD: A third Chinese Covid-19 vaccine, CoronaVac, has been approved in Pakistan.
It was developed by the firm Sinovac Biotech.
The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) authorised the vaccine for emergency use, the National Institute of Health (NIH) confirmed.
It has been approved for everyone above 18 years.
The NIH statement added that the authorisation will be reviewed every quarter keeping in view data regarding the safety, efficacy and quality of the vaccine.
CoronaVac is an inactivated Covid-19 vaccine that has an efficacy of 50.7 per cent against symptomatic cases, according to the China Global Television Network (CGTN).
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the threshold for vaccine effectiveness needs to be 50 per cent or above.
The efficacy was confirmed after Brazil released the trial results of the vaccine on Sunday.
The clinical trial included 12,400 volunteers. Results have been sent to the Lancet.
The other two Chinese vaccines approved are Sinopharm’s BBIBP-CorV and CanSino’s Convidecia.
It is pertinent here to mention that the country began its vaccination drive in February, wherein the government has been rolling out the vaccine in phases to the most vulnerable members of society free of cost.
To this effect, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Health and Finance Minister Taimur Saleem Jhagra on Monday announced that the coronavirus patients of the province will now be treated free of charge through the Sehat Card Plus.
The confirmation came a week after the minister had announced that the Sehat Card program will cover coronavirus treatment.
In a tweet message, the Minister said Covid patients in Pakhtunkhwa would now be treated free of charge under Sehat Card Plus, in both public as well as select private sector hospitals.
The provincial minister assured everyone that in the middle of the “difficult pandemic”, the KP government was trying its best to ease the pain of as many as possible.
Anwar Hospital in Swat will start its coverage from today and Waseem Medical Complex in Malakand will start treating patients under the Sehat Sahulat Card from April 17.
In KP’s largest city, Peshawar, RMI, Kuwait Teaching Hospital and Muhammad Hospital are already treating patients free of charge under the program, while Afridi Medical Complex and Maqsood Medical Centre will start coverage from April 14.
Earlier this month, Jhagra had announced that the recently introduced Sehat Card program by the provincial government will also cover coronavirus treatment.
Jhagra appealed to the public to help control the high positivity rate being reported in the province during the third wave.
He said by controlling the positivity ratio the pressure on the healthcare system could be eased. KP is one of the provinces badly hit by the third wave of coronavirus.
It merits a mention here that the Sehat Sahulat card program was rolled out in a few districts of the province last year and was eventually expanded to the whole province. The program provides Rs1 million insurance in terms of healthcare services to every family in the province.
Coronavirus on Monday claimed 58 more lives in Pakistan during the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll to 15,501.
The latest statistics of the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) showed the Covid-19 has claimed 58 more lives and 4,584 fresh infections were reported during the period.
During the period of a day, the total count of active cases was recorded at 75,266 and the positivity rate stood at 10.29 per cent.
The health facilities across the country conducted 44,514 coronavirus detection tests, taking the total number of Covid-19 tests to 10,779,474 since the first case was reported.
According to the statistics, 58 patients were declared critical, adding to the total number of patients suffering from sensitive health condition up to 4,201.
Overall 634,835 people have recovered from the virus including 3,135 who have regained their health from Covid-19 during the past 24 hours.
Earlier on Sunday, the Punjab health department had proposed a complete lockdown for two weeks in the province to curb the rising number of coronavirus cases.
The decision had been taken in a meeting of the Punjab health department chaired by its minister Dr Yasmin Rashid to review the Covid-19 situation. The meeting had recommended imposing a complete lockdown for two weeks in seven districts of Punjab.
The approval for the lockdown will be sought in the meeting of the Punjab cabinet meeting.
