ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has started putting together China’s single-dose CanSino vaccine with imported raw materials and hopes to prepare 100,000 shots before rolling them out in local packaging by the end of the month, a local media outlet quoted the National Institute of Health (NIH) as saying on Thursday.

The country received a major shipment of CanSino vaccines from China on Wednesday and hopes to receive over 1.2 million doses through the COVAX program for poor nations by Friday. 

“The raw material is enough to produce 120,000 doses of CanSino vaccines,” NIH authorities were quoted by Geo News as saying. “The [locally packaged] jabs will be available by the end of the current month.”

The World Health Organization is currently reviewing China’s COVID-19 vaccines for global emergency use. So far, Beijing has mostly exported the vaccines to developing nations, though a favorable verdict by the WHO may help address the low vaccine distribution problem worldwide and significantly increase the pace of the global immunization campaign.

Pakistan has largely relied on Chinese vaccines, though a private firm also imported a limited number of doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine, which were administered last month. 

Federal Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar has said Pakistan has improved the pace of its coronavirus immunization drive and is now vaccinating over 200,000 people daily. Less than 3 million people have been vaccinated so far in the nation of 220 million.