Pakistan gives green signal to Chinese COVID-19 vaccine

ISLAMABAD: As Pakistan struggles with a second wave of coronavirus infections, authorities on Monday green-lighted the emergency use of the Chinese anti-coronavirus vaccine produced by Sinopharm.

Sources told Geo News that the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) has approved the vaccine for emergency use across the country. The decision was taken during meetings held between January 14 and 18 after reviewing vaccine results data submitted by the National Institute of Health (NIH).

The development allows federal and provincial governments, and private sector to import the Chinese vaccine. In December 2020, Federal Minister for Science and Technology Chaudhry Fawad Hussain said Pakistan will purchase 1.2 million COVID-19 vaccine doses from China’s Sinopharm.

The anti-coronavirus vaccine is developed by China National Biotec Group (CNBG), a Sinopharm subsidiary. On December 30, Sinopharm announced that phase-III trials showed the vaccine was 79% effective.

But the United Arab Emirates, which approved the the vaccine for emergency use in December, said interim results of Phase-III trials showed 86% it was effective.

The vaccine has been approved for use in China, Jordan, Egypt, Bahrain, and Serbia.

This is the second vaccine approved for emergency use in Pakistan. Last Friday, DRAP green-lighted use of AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine. Pakistan is currently running phase-III clinical trials for CanSino Biologics’ vaccine candidate, Ad5-nCoV, led by the government-run National Institute of Health.