KARACHI: The secretary general of the Pakistan Medical Association (PMA), Qaisar Sajjad, said the body had urged the World Health Organization (WHO) to help devise a policy making it mandatory for nations to allow travelers to be vaccinated with any brand of the COVID-19 vaccine, saying limiting the approved list of jab manufacturers would hit travel and trade.

Sajjad’s comments come after the PMA sent the WHO a letter highlighting concerns that a number of countries had made it mandatory for visitors to be vaccinated only with specific brands of COVID-19 shots.

“The concerned authorities of some countries have approved specific brands mandatory for incoming visitors,” the PMA wrote in a letter to WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“We have approached the WHO because countries are using different brands of vaccines ... manufactured in different geographical locations, which means people are not being administered the same brand of vaccine globally," PMA’s Sajjad told Arab News.

Despite this, some countries have made it mandatory for visitors to be vaccinated by specific brands, which would have a "devastating" effect on international travel and trade.

“Keeping in view the above facts we request WHO to convince such countries to accept all vaccine brands approved by other countries for their citizens, otherwise it will create problems for people who wish to go abroad for employment, business, education, medical treatment and for other purposes,” Sajjad said.

Sajjad cited the example of Saudi Arabia, which had made the use of the Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson vaccines mandatory for all visitors to the kingdom, including for Hajj and Umrah pilgrims. Last week, Saudi health authorities added China's Sinopharm to its list of approved vaccines, bringing some relief to Pakistan where a government-run inoculation drive has - apart from limited AstaZena jabs - mostly used Chinese vaccines. 

Some of the most widely used vaccines around the world include Moderna, Pfizer, Sputnik, Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Sinovac, Covaxin,  Novavax, Johnson & Johnson, CornovaVac, and Covidecia.

Pakistan has so far vaccinated around five million people.