Punjab facing Covid-19 vaccine shortage: Yasmin Rashid

LAHORE: Punjab Health Minister Dt Yasmin Rashid said that the Covid-19 vaccination supply would improve in the province after June 20 as more doses will reach Islamabad on Monday (tomorrow), ARY News reported.

Speaking in the ARY News program Sawal Ye Hai, the provincial health minister said that Sinopharm and Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine doses are available in Punjab.

“There is a global shortage of Covid-19 vaccines. The situation in Punjab would improve in coming days,” she said, adding that Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines being administered to the general public in Punjab.

Yasmin Rashid said that Punjab had received few quantity of Pfizer doses from the Centre. She further said that the vaccination shortage in Pakistan occurred due to a delay in the arrival of vaccines from China.

She said that Punjab has so far inoculated 7 million people against the novel coronavirus.

Amid a Covid-19 vaccine shortage being reported at vaccination centres across the country, enraged citizens forcibly entered the Lahore Expo Centre on Saturday.

Read More: Pakistan has a stock of over 1mn doses of COVID vaccine: Dr Faisal Sultan

Chaos was witnessed at the Lahore Expo vaccination centre when people who gathered there to get inoculated against the virus got angry over being kept waiting for long and broke inside, smashing its glass doors.

“We have been standing since the morning but are not being administered vaccine,” a citizen lamented.

However, the administration said the citizens were not ready to leave despite being told that the inoculation centre was out of stocks.

A similar situation is being faced by vaccination centres in Karachi, Islamabad and other parts of the country.