Parliamentary Secretary for Ministry of National Health Services Dr Nausheen Hamid on Thursday said that Pakistan is expected to get first COVID-19 vaccine shipment by end of January.

As quoted by Radio Pakistan, Dr Hamid said that the government was "urgently" drafting a database of all public and private medical workers to get them inoculated in the first phase.

However, the publication did not specify which vaccine and from which country Pakistan would procure it.

It is believed that this would be a shipment of the Sinopharm vaccine from China.

Earlier, Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry said on December 31 that the cabinet committee had decided to buy the COVID-19 vaccine from Chinese company Sinopharm.

“Initially, 1.2 million doses will be purchased from Sinopharm,” the federal science minister said on Twitter.