Pakistan to receive 17.2 million COVID-19 doses through COVAX

Pakistan will get 17.2 million doses of coronavirus vaccines through the COVAX facility.

COVAX is co-led by the GAVI alliance which secures vaccines for poor countries, the World Health Organization, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations and the UN Children’s Fund.

The COVAX programme published its first distribution list in which it aims to deliver vaccines in the first half of 2021. COVAX has allocated at least 330 million doses of coronavirus vaccines for poorer countries. The distribution would cover an average of 3.3% of total population of 145 countries by mid-2021.

"This is in line with the Facility target to reach at least 3% population coverage in all countries in the first half of the year, enough to protect the most vulnerable groups such as health care workers," a statement by the programme said.

The distribution list includes 240m doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, licensed to the Serum Institute of India (SII); 1.2m doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and 96m doses of AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine.

According to the document, countries will receive doses in proportion to their population size. Pakistan will be getting 17.2 million doses, India 97.2m, Nigeria 16 million, Indonesia 13.7 million, Bangladesh 12.8 million and Brazil 10.6 million.