RAWALPINDI: The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China, has donated COVID-19 vaccine for Pakistan Armed Forces. The Pakistan military is the first foreign military to receive vaccine assistance/donation from the PLA, says an ISPR press release on Monday. However, keeping with the Pakistan Armed Forces’ traditional spirit of ‘Nation comes first, always and every time’ it has been decided to contribute complete vaccine donation in the national vaccine drive to be administered to frontline healthcare workers across Pakistan, who are the real heroes fighting against pandemic and saving precious lives. The Pakistan Armed Forces extended their deepest gratitude to PLA and People’s Republic of China for this magnanimous donation during testing times.
APP adds: Meanwhile, Minister for Planning Development and Special Initiatives Asad Umar Monday hailed the decision by military leadership to hand over the COVID-19 vaccines gifted by China to the government for the health workers. In a tweet, the minister said: “Great decision by the military leadership to hand over the consignment of vaccines sent by the people’s Liberation Army of China as donation to Pakistani military, consistent with govt decision of first priority to health care workers” he added.
M. Waqar Bhatti adds: The second consignment of China’s Sinopharm vaccine comprising half a million doses from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China to the Pakistan Army reached at the Noor Khan Airbase, Islamabad, on Monday, which was officially handed over to the Pakistani military officials during a ceremony.
The first female three-star general of Pakistan Army, Lt. Gen. Nigar Johar Khan, received the consignment and said the gift of vaccine once again proved the best relationship between the two nations.
Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health Dr. Faisal Sultan also confirmed the arrival of vaccine from China and said a tranche of the vaccine received on Monday would be utilized to vaccinate frontline healthcare workers during the ongoing drive.
Officials at the National Health Services, Regulations and Coordination (NHS-R&C) said this consignment of vaccine delivered to Pakistan was “army-to-army collaboration” between the Pakistani and Chinese militaries and added a sizeable number of donated vaccine doses would be utilized to vaccinate the frontline healthcare workers.
Pakistan received the first consignment of Chinese vaccine Sinopharm comprising 500,000 doses on January 31, 2021 from China, which is being used to inoculate frontline healthcare workers in the country. So far, over 20,000 frontline healthcare workers have already been vaccinated.
Pakistani health authorities Monday said preliminary results of another Chinese vaccine developed by the Beijing Institute of Biotechnology (Beijing, China) and CanSino Biologics have shown promise and very soon its data would be provided to an expert committee to assess and recommend it for the emergency use authorization in Pakistan.
“Clinical trial data (phase-3) of a one-dose Ad5-nCoV vaccine for Covid (Cansino Bio) received. Interim analysis by the Independent Data Monitoring Committee shows 65.7% efficacy at preventing symptomatic cases and 90.98% at preventing severe disease (multicountry analysis),” SAPM Dr. Faisal Sultan said in another tweet on Monday evening.
On the other hand, health authorities in Pakistan said they were also going to get around six to seven million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca’s AZD1222 vaccine by the end of the current month, which would be used to inoculate the remaining healthcare workers as well as people above 65 years of age, as the Chinese vaccine is not recommended for people above 60 years due to lack of data.
They said that through the COVAX facility, Pakistan expected to get at least 17 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca’s vaccine, while it is also hopeful of getting a few hundred thousand doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine “BNT162b2” in donation.Pakistan has so far granted emergency use authorisation for three vaccines — Sinopharm, AstraZeneca and Sputnik V developed by Russia — but so far only China’s Sinopharm vaccine has arrived in the country.
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