Pakistan has decided to purchase 1.2million doses of a Chinese vaccine, developed by China’s state-owned company Sinopharm, amid a worsening coronavirus outbreak across the world.
According to Science and Technology Minister Fawad Chaudhry, the vaccine will be available in the first quarter of 2021 and it will be administered to frontline health workers in the first phase.
“The Cabinet Committee has decided to initially purchase 1.2 million doses of the vaccine from the Chinese company Sinopharm, which will be provided free of cost to frontline workers in the first quarter of 2021,” the federal minister wrote on Twitter.
Meanwhile, China has approved its first homegrown coronavirus vaccine, developed by state-owned pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm.
CNN reported that the vaccine is 79.34% effective as per the interim analysis of Phase 3 clinical trials. China has drastically scaled up its vaccine emergency use program in recent weeks.
Since December 15, the Chinese government has administered more than 3 million vaccine doses on “key groups” in the population, Zeng Yixin, vice-minister of China’s National Health Commission, said at a news conference.
According to the report, fewer than 0.1 per cent developed a light fever, and about two people per million developed “relative serious adverse reactions” such as allergies.
Beijing Biological Products Institute Co., a Sinopharm subsidiary, has said that interim results show the Sinopharm vaccine is safe and people who received two doses produced high-level antibodies.
