(Karachi) Federal Interior Minister Ijaz Shah has been administered trial vaccine of COVID-19 from China at the University of Health Sciences (UHS) Lahore, local media reported on Monday.

“Interior Minister Ijaz Shah was administered the vaccine, which has been in phase three of clinical trials,” UHS Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Javed Akram said.

“The minister’s staff members were also administered the trial vaccine,” Prof Akram added.

Earlier, Pakistan began final-phase testing of a Chinese-made vaccine against novel coronavirus, the first ever clinical trial of its kind in the South Asian nation.

China had supplied the COVID-19 medication, developed by Chinese biotech CanSinoBio in partnership with the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology, to Islamabad as part of a trial agreement.

So far, the trial vaccine has seen a positive public response, raising the hope that the effort would meet its target. The specific vaccine has already established its safety and efficacy in the previous trials held in China with no serious adverse effects.

It’s now being tested on a wider population in Russia, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan; the country has been allocated 8,000 recruits out of a total of 40,000 and is currently conducting the trial at five centres in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.