RIYADH/ISLAMABAD: Accepting Pakistan’s request to include China-made vaccines to its list of approved Covid-19 shots for visitors, Saudi Arabia has permitted Pakistan nationals inoculated with Chinese jabs to enter the Kingdom, reports said.
However, the visitors will have to receive a booster shot of vaccines approved by the Saudi Ministry of Health on arrival in the Kingdom, health authorities said.
In addition, the travellers are also required to provide evidence of negative antigen tests on arrival.
Saudi Arabia has only approved the AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines. Anyone arriving without one of those shots is required to quarantine at a cost many say they cannot afford.
But Pakistan has relied extensively on the Sinopharm, CanSino, and Sinovac vaccines the government purchased from China. That became a problem for the tens of thousands of expatriates — who work in Saudi Arabia and contribute $7 billion — when the Kingdom barred direct travel from Pakistan citing pandemic concerns.
The government only started using AstraZeneca to inoculate the people after receiving 1.2 million doses of the vaccine in May under the World Health Organisation’s COVAX programme for equitable distribution of Covid-19 shots among developing nations.
Last month, Minister for Interior Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed announced that Prime Minister Imran Khan himself was handling the matter of Saudi and some other countries in the Middle East not accepting the vaccination certificate of the Sinopharm vaccine.
The government has also made an agreement to procure 13 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer, Minister of State for Health Dr Faisal Sultan announced last month.
An exact timeline was not yet available, Dr Faisal had told Reuters, but said the doses would arrive by the end of 2021, under an agreement the government has made with the manufacturer.
The government has also approved spending $1.1 billion on procuring vaccines, part of its goal to inoculate at least 70 million people.
