Secrecy shrouds Pakistan’s vaccine procurement deal with Pfizer

ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan government’s vaccine procurement agreement with Pfizer Pakistan and BioNTech is shrouded in secrecy as officials refused on Tuesday to divulge the contract amount and delivery dates for the 13 million COVID-19 doses.
The government on Monday signed a deal with Pfizer Pakistan to get the coronavirus jabs but did not release any details of the agreement.
“The contract amount and delivery dates are highly confidential, and we cannot disclose them at the moment,” Ali Mahfooz, a health and value manager at Pfizer Pakistan, told Arab News on Tuesday.
The company has signed the deal with the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) to supply 13 million doses of the American vaccine, saying deliveries were planned in the upcoming months.
A media contact person at the NDMA told Arab News that details of the deal were yet not known. “I’ll be sharing these details with the media as soon as I get them from the high-ups,” he said.
The South Asian nation of 220 million has received about 16 million doses of different vaccines since February this year when it launched its immunization campaign. Until the beginning of the week, it had administered 13.5 million jabs.
The country has procured a majority of vaccines from China and plans to immunize at least 70 percent of its population by next year.
“We are deeply honored to work with the Pakistan government and to marshal our scientific and manufacturing resources toward our shared goal of bringing a COVID-19 vaccine to the people of Pakistan as quickly as possible,” Syed Muhammad Wajeehuddin, Country Manager for Pfizer Pakistan, said in a statement on Monday.
“In the face of this global health crisis, Pfizer’s purpose – breakthroughs that change patients’ lives – has taken on an even greater urgency,” he added. “Our hope is that our vaccine will help make this happen.”
“I would like to thank the Pakistan government for its support and putting trust in our ability to develop a vaccine that, we believe, has the potential to help address this global pandemic threat. Our goal remains to deliver a global supply of a well-tolerated and effective COVID-19 vaccine for many people around the world, as quickly as we can,” said Sean Marett, Chief Business and Chief Commercial Officer at BioNTech.
Pfizer and BioNTech aim to manufacture more than 3 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine globally by the end of 2021.
Meanwhile, more than five dozen people intending to travel abroad staged a protest demonstration in Islamabad on Tuesday after medics refused to administer them the AstraZeneca vaccine.
The government earlier this month amended its guidelines on the use of AstraZeneca vaccine, allowing people over the age of 18 to get the vaccine by submitting a consent form.
Earlier, only people above the age of 40 were eligible to receive the vaccine.
“Our visas are about to expire,” Hamid Ilyas, a protester outside the F-9 mass vaccination center in Islamabad, said while talking to Arab News. “How can we travel abroad without getting the vaccine?”