ISLAMABAD: The government will receive the first shipment of 100,000 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine under the Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access programme on Saturday (today) and Sunday, United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund said.
The announcement was shared by UNICEF Pakistan which also commended Pakistan for the “successful rollout of the countrywide Covid-19 vaccination campaign, excellent arrangements at vaccination centres and inclusion of all above 18 years of age”.
Over 100,000 doses of @pfizer #COVID19 vaccine via #COVAX have arrived in Pakistan 🇵🇰. Shipments of @pfizer diluents and syringes will be arriving over the next two days. The vaccines will be used for @GovtofPakistan‘s ongoing #COVID19 vaccination campaign.@nhsrcofficial pic.twitter.com/Ps4Qmnk1np
— UNICEF Pakistan (@UNICEF_Pakistan) May 28, 2021
COVAX, a global programme to provide vaccines mainly for developing countries, has recently been hit by supply problems, starkly illustrating the cost of export bans, hoarding and supply shortages.
The programme has committed 45 million doses to Pakistan up to the end of 2021, and deliveries were meant to start in March. However, India, making the AstraZeneca vaccination, halted supplies due to its own worsening Covid-19 situation.
Pakistan received its first batch of 1.2 million Covid-19 vaccine doses under its COVAX quota earlier this month. Officials had said at the time that a further 1.2 million doses would be received in the coming days.
Meanwhile, the government portal reported 2,455 new infections of Covid-19 after testing 55,442 samples, receiving back a positivity ratio of 4.43 percent. With new infections, the confirmed cases climbed to 916,239.
While deaths increased by 73 to 20,680, recoveries increased by 2,136 to 836,702, or 91.3 percent of total infections.
There are currently 58,857 active cases of Covid-19 in the country, with 4,083 of them require critical care.
The government started a vaccination drive in February with 1.2 million doses donated by Beijing and was able to procure over 4 million doses from China in April.
The government launched a nationwide vaccination drive, starting with older people and frontline healthcare workers, in March. The drive began with a focus on the oldest people in the community, generally over the age of 80, and worked its way down.
Battling a third peak of the virus, the Health Department began the campaign with Chinese Sinopharm and CanSino jabs.
Private hospitals in major cities are also using the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine that has been imported by a local pharmaceutical company.
Initially, the government had to deal with vaccination hesitancy and a shortage of vaccine supplies and had limited shots to people aged 30 or over.
But with purchases from China and allocations from the World Health Organisation and the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, the government has now secured more than 18 million doses and is keen to get them out into the population.
The health authorities have administered 5.3 million vaccine doses with supplies from three Chinese companies — Sinopharm, Sinovac and CanSinbio — and the Oxford-AstraZeneca and Sputnik-V shots.
