Pakistan finalizes deal to import two mln doses of Sputnik V

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s armed forces have finalized a deal of two million doses of the Russian vaccine of coronavirus ‘Sputnik V’, ARY News reported on Tuesday.

The first consignment of 2,00,000 doses of Sputnik V has been present at the Abu Dhabi airport to be transported to Pakistan.

An aircraft of Pakistan Air Force (PAF) will airlift the first batch of the Russian vaccine from Abu Dhabi to the country, according to sources.

Recently private hospitals in major cities of the country had started inoculation with Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine imported by a pharmaceutical company.

Pakistan in its coronavirus vaccination drive mostly used vaccines imported from China. The country on Sunday received another consignment of COVID-19 vaccine from China comprising of 1.2 million doses.

The Ministry of Health received a batch of 10,00,000 doses of the SinoVac and 200,000 jabs of the CanSino vaccine procured from China.

The sources further shared that another batch of two million COVID vaccine-SinoVac will reach Islamabad on May 21.

In a bid to expedite the vaccination process in the country, Pakistan has signed contracts for the purchase of the COVID vaccine with several companies including Chinese firms.

Pakistan has recently started registration of its population over 30-years for vaccination.

Earlier on May 9, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) had announced that Pakistan received nearly 12 million doses of corona vaccine so far.

The country has received overall 11.9 mln doses of China’s Sinopharm, Sinovac and CanSino COVID-19 vaccines and AstraZeneca from the COVAX, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) said in its statement.

COVAX had provided 1.23 mln vaccine doses of Oxford University’s AstraZeneca, the NCOC further said.