Pakistan has not placed any orders for Covid-19 vaccine, says health official

Pakistan has not placed any final order to import the Covid-19 vaccine nor has any vaccine manufacturer accepted the country's request for supply of the vaccine, a top official in the Imran Khan government has said.

In a telephonic interaction with The News International, Dr Faisal Khan, the Special Assistant to Prime Minister on Health said: "Although, we are striving hard to get the first batch of Covid-19 vaccine at the earliest for our frontline workers and others but the final order has not yet been placed and accepted (by any vaccine manufacturer)."

On January 13, Dawn had reported that the only hurdle in importing the Covid-19 vaccine from Chinese state-owned company Sinopharm will be removed soon with its Phase-I trial in Karachi reaching the final stage.

While Pakistan has reported a total of 514,338 Covid-19 cases and 10,863 deaths, the country's top health expert said that though China's Sinopharm has submitted its data with the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) but no agreement has been made on its procurement.

"The second vaccine candidate is Cansino, whose trials are currently underway and they are a couple of weeks away from submitting their data to us. We are also interested in Russian vaccine Sputnik V, who have submitted some data but we have sought more data from them," he said.

"We are trying to get AstraZeneca vaccine both through the Covax facility and through direct procurement," he added.

This revelation comes as several countries have already started administering Covid-19 vaccines.