ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani doctor who became the first person in the country to officially receive the COVID-19 vaccine on Tuesday has cautioned people to keep wearing masks and maintain social distance even after getting vaccinated.

Pakistan launched its COVID-19 vaccination program across the country on Wednesday, with health care staff the first to receive shots of the Sinopharm vaccine donated by neighboring China.

At a ceremony witnessed by Prime Minister Imran Khan on Tuesday, Dr. Imran Sikander became the first person in the country to officially receive a dose of the vaccine.

Around 182 doctors and 30 paramedics have lost their lives to the virus, according to the Pakistan Medical Association.

“Do not get over excited after getting the vaccine, that you are immune,” Sikander, an anaesthetist and critical care specialist at the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS) in Islamabad, told Arab News in an interview on Thursday. “No, still there is a 16 percent chance of getting infected. The best thing is a combination of getting vaccinated, using masks and keeping social distance.”

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 551,842 total cases, with 11,886 deaths on Friday.

This Monday, Pakistan received 500,000 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine for free from China and is expecting to get additional doses before the current supply runs out. The government has said it is in touch with vaccine manufacturers around the world as the country requires 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 government’s health adviser told reporters this week.

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.

“The only protection [against the virus] is vaccines,” Sikander said. “I request the people of Pakistan to go for vaccination without any hesitation, and keep wearing masks.”

He said he had not developed any side effects to the vaccine so far and felt “comfortable.”

Sikander was selected as the first person to get the vaccine, he said, because he was particularly vulnerable to the virus as the head of a team at the PIMS hospital that looked after critical COVID-19 patients.

“I have been in direct contact with patients very frequently, so that’s why I was selected as the first person,” the doctor said. “This is quite a proud moment for me. I wanted to make an example for other health care workers and colleagues, and that’s why I accepted their [the government’s] offer to get the first jab.”

But he said despite decades of being a doctor and treating critical patients, he had never seen anything “worse” than the coronavirus.

“I have been dealing with so many other critical illnesses, but this [COVID-19] gives you a lot of depression,” Sikander said, “because mortality is very high, and a lot of people die during the course of their treatment.”