PIA flight lands in Islamabad with vaccine doses from China

ISLAMABAD: A PIA flight carrying large quantity of Chinese vaccine landed at Islamabad today, ARY News reported on Tuesday.

A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight carrying two million doses of Coronavac vaccine from China arrived at Islamabad airport today, according to sources.

The airport management handed over the vaccine to the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), which is being shifted to the EPI warehouse, sources said.

Pakistan has purchased the vaccine from China’s Sinovac vaccine company, according to sources.

It is to be mentioned here that as many as four million vaccine shots have reached Pakistan within three days, two million each of Sinopharm and Coronavac.

The country have available stocks of Sinopharm, Coronavac and Moderna vaccines’ as well as two lac doses of PakVac jabs, sources said.

The EPI has prepared distribution plan of Coronavac doses among provinces, sources said. The immunization body has also received the demand list of Coronavac and Sinopharm vaccines from the federating units.

The provinces will be provided Coronavac and Sinopharm vaccines according to their requirement, sources added.

Around 15 million more doses of different Covid-19 vaccines, including Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca, will arrive in Pakistan this month, informed sources said.

They said 90 per cent of the vaccines to be flown in in July have been purchased by the Government of Pakistan.

The country will likely receive more shots of AstraZeneca vaccine through Covax, they said, adding raw material for production of the homemade PakVac vaccine will also be imported from China’s CanSino this month.

Earlier, 2.5 million shots of Moderna vaccine were received through Covax on July 2 and another two million doses of Sinopharm vaccine were flown in the country.

Two million doses of Sinovac vaccine reached Pakistan today, while its another consignment will arrive after July 20.