Govt kicks off local production, packaging of China's CanSino vaccine jabs

(Karachi) In a bid to curb the spread of deadly COVID disease, the government has kicked off the process of preparing China’s single-dose CanSino vaccine after acquiring raw materials from other countries, local media reported.

As per details, Pakistan is set to prepare 100,000 shots before rolling them out in local packaging by the end of May.

National Institute of Health (NIH) officials said that the raw material is enough to produce 120,000 doses of CanSino vaccines. They mentioned that the locally packaged vaccine doses will be available by the end of the current month.

Earlier, the government decided that it will locally produce the CanSino COVID-19 vaccine with the help of China.

NIH Head Maj. Gen. Aamer Ikram told the parliament's health committee that China's single-dose CanSinoBio vaccine will be prepared locally.

He said Beijing agreed to transfer the technology for the vaccine to Islamabad while a Chinese team is overseeing the project at the NIH.

On April 29, three special planes of Pakistan International Airlines carrying more than 600,000 COVID-19 vaccines from China arrived in Islamabad.

The Ministry of National Health Services, Regulations, and Coordination said the South African and Brazil variants of coronavirus had been detected in the country, urging people to continue taking precautions and register for a vaccine.

It said that the health authorities and the National Command and Operation Centre are regularly monitoring Covid-19 variants of concern. “As a result of this proactive effort, one sample of the SARS-COV-2; B.1.351 ("South African" variant) and one sample of SARS-COV-2; P1 ("Brazil") variant have been detected at the National Institute of Health through genome sequencing.”