Pakistan secures 17 million doses of AstraZeneca

(Karachi) Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr Faisal Sultan has said that around seven million doses of AstraZeneca would also reach Pakistan in the first quarter of the current year.

In a tweet, the Sultan said: “Happy to share that in addition to the 500,000 doses of Sinopharm, almost 7 million doses of AstraZeneca to be made available in Q1 and given to the public free of cost! Pakistan’s vaccine drive starts next week, beginning with frontline healthcare workers.”

Minister for Plan­ning, Development and Spec­ial Initiatives Asad Umar also commented on the matter, saying the government had rec­eived a letter from Covax that 17 million doses of Astra­Zeneca would be provided to Pakistan in the first half of 2021.

“We signed with Covax nearly 8 months back to ensure availability,” the minister tweeted. Out of the 17m doses, seven million will be available by March.

Pakistan approved AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, making it the first coronavirus vaccine to get the green light for use in the South Asian country.

Faisal said that DRAP granted emergency use authorisation to AstraZeneca's COVID vaccine. He stated, “We are pleased to announce that the government of Pakistan, through Covax facility, has secured 17 million indicated doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, out of which 35-40pc (6-6.8 million) doses will be available within the first quarter and the rest in the second quarter of 2021.”

In September 2020, AstraZeneca had suspended global trials of its experimental coronavirus vaccine after an unexplained illness in a participant in Britain.

The vaccine to combat COVID-19, which Britain's AstraZeneca is developing with the University of Oxford, had been described by the World Health Organization as probably the world's leading candidate and the furthest developed.