ISLAMABAD: Pakistan launched its COVID-19 vaccination program on Wednesday, with health care staff the first to receive shots of the Sinopharm vaccine donated by neighboring China.
The South Asian country of 220 million managed to contain the number of coronavirus cases early in the pandemic, but is now fighting a second wave, recording 549,032 total cases, with 11,802 deaths.
This Monday, Pakistan received 500,000 doses of the vaccine for free from China and is expecting to get additional doses before the current supply runs out.
“It [Sinopharm] is a trusted vaccine and reported to be 79-86 percent effective, that is a good ratio,” the PM’s health adviser Dr. Faisal Sultan said at the vaccine inauguration ceremony in Islamabad.
On Tuesday, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan had urged all health care workers to get vaccinated as a doctor became the first in the country to officially receive a dose at a ceremony attended by Khan. Around 182 doctors and 30 paramedics have lost their lives to the virus, according to the Pakistan Medical Association.
On Wednesday, the nationwide vaccination drive kicked off with vaccine doses given to three health care workers in Islamabad, identified as Rizwana Yasmeen, Javed Iqbal and Fahad Mehmood.
A vaccination drive could not be launched in Pakistan’s most populous province of Punjab due to security concerns and a delay in the supply of vaccines to designated centers, local media reported.
The government plans to vaccinate 0.5 million health care workers in the first phase of its campaign in the next three weeks, with 578 adult vaccine centers established across the country with a daily capacity to handle 40,000 people.
In the next phase, Sultan said 17 million of the “most vulnerable” people, including 9.5 million above 65 years of age, would be given shots.
The adviser said the government had developed a software to maintain a database of the supply, distribution and inoculation of the vaccine to ensure transparency in the whole process.
The prime minister’s adviser said the government was in touch with vaccine manufacturers around the world as the country required at least 73 million more doses to vaccinate its eligible population of 100 million above the age of 18.
The government will get 17 million doses from Covax — a WHO-led initiative that aims to ensure equitable vaccine supply to developing countries — before June 30. The supply will begin by the end of this month.
“The vaccine for all the targeted population will be available by the end of the year,” Sultan said. “There is no need to be worried about. It is important for all to get the jabs,” he said, speaking about side effects.
Planning minister Asad Umar, who heads the NCOC, the federal agency overseeing the pandemic response, called health care workers the “real heroes against the coronavirus.”
“They put their lives at risk to treat people,” he said at the launch ceremony. “The whole nation owes them gratitude.”
In Pakistan’s southern Sindh province, the vaccination drive kicked off on Wednesday with the first dose administered to Dr. Tanveed Ahmed at the Dow University Hospital Ojha Campus.
Addressing the launch ceremony, Chief Minister Sindh Syed Murad Ali said the federal government had sent to Sindh 83,000 of the 500,000 doses it had received from China. He thanked the government of China but said Pakistan, despite being a nuclear state, was behind at least 80 nations in starting its vaccination process.
“Governments around the world have played very active roles,” he said. “Unfortunately, we are very late. I hope the process will be accelerated.”
With additional reporting from Naimat Khan in Karachi