KARACHI: Three special Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flights are carrying a million doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine to Pakistan on Thursday, with the first two having already landed in Islamabad.

A third flight will land about midnight, a spokesperson for the national flag carrier said.

“Three special flights will bring one million vaccines,” PIA spokesperson Abdullah Khan told Arab News. “Using three Boeing aircraft for transportation is aimed at accelerating the delivery of vaccines.”

On Saturday, three aircraft flew one million doses of COVID-19 vaccines from China to Islamabad.

On Wednesday, Pakistan’s health chief Dr. Faisal Sultan said 78% of 18.7 million coronavirus vaccine doses received and ordered by Pakistan so far had been purchased by the government.

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 gifts of jabs and had not placed purchase orders in time.

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.