COVID-19 vaccine to be stored in seven cities of Pakistan: sources

KARACHI: COVID-19 vaccine will be stored at seven separate locations in the country for the vaccination process which is due to start from February 03, ARY NEWS reported quoting sources.

According to sources, seven cities across the country has been selected for the storage process as both the Centre and provinces had expressed their satisfaction over the systems developed in the storage centres.

“A trained staff is being deployed at the provincial storage vaccine centres to deal with the entire process,” they said.

Detailing the storage centres being developed across the country, the sources said that for Punjab, the vaccine will be stored in Rawalpindi and Lahore; for Sindh, it would be kept in Karachi; while Peshawar and Quetta have been identified as places for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Balochistan provinces respectively.

“In Azad Jammu Kashmir, it will be stored in Muzaffarabad and in Gilgit Baltistan, it will be kept at a storage facility in Gilgit,” they said adding that central storage of the Expanded Programme on Immunisation’s (EPI) will be used for securing vaccine for Islamabad residents.

They further said that the vaccine could be easily transported from designated storage places to other parts of the provinces. “A computerized record of vaccine’s arrival and departure will be maintained at the cold storage,” they said.

It is pertinent to mention here that a special Pakistan Air Force (PAF) plane with the first batch of COVID-19 vaccine doses reached Islamabad today.

The plane carrying 500,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine, gifted from China to Pakistan landed at the Noor Khan Airbase. SAPM Dr Faisal also reached Islamabad in the plane.

According to the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC), all arrangements for storage, transportation and administration of the vaccine have been finalised.