PIA planes bring one million doses of China’s Sinopharm to Pakistan

KARACHI: Three special Pakistan International Airlines flights carried a million doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine to Pakistan on Thursday, adding to the low vaccine supplies of a country of 220 million where only 2 million people have been vaccinated so far, the lowest rate in South Asia. 
The government of Prime Minister Imran Khan has come under fire in recent weeks over its slow vaccine rollout, with one of the main criticisms being that the government was too reliant on donations and had not placed purchase orders in time.
“The fresh consignment is in addition to one million doses of COVID-19 vaccine transported to Pakistan from China by three planes of the national flag carrier on April 25,” Qadir Bux Sangi, PIA country manager for China, said. 
On Thursday, Pakistan’s health chief said the country had purchased 13 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from three Chinese companies and expected to receive them in the next two months.
The vaccines were procured from Sinopharm, CanSinoBio and Sinovac, Faisal Sultan told Reuters.
They will supplement around 2.4 million shots from the COVAX program for poorer nations that are expected to arrive during that period.
“We will be continuously procuring from all available sources across the world,” Sultan said. “For now, China remains the primary source for vaccines to meet our present and ongoing needs but all our options are open for effective and safe vaccines.”
Sultan said around 2.4 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, part of the first tranche of 14 million doses under the COVAX program run by the World Health Organization and GAVI, would also be arriving and it would likely come from South Korea.
On Wednesday, Sultan said 78% of 18.7 million coronavirus vaccine doses received and ordered by Pakistan so far had been purchased by the government.
Giving a breakdown of vaccine arrivals in the country, Sultan said, 500,000 had arrived in January, 700,000 in February, 1,060,000 in March, 3,000,000 in April while 6,700,000 were expected in May and 6,300,000 in June.
Pakistan has so far vaccinated two million of its 220 million population.
Official data showed 5,480 people had tested positive for the coronavirus and 151 had died in the past 24 hours. On Wednesday, Pakistan reported 201 coronavirus deaths in 24 hours — its highest single-day COVID-19 death toll since the pandemic began last February.