Zubair Qureshi
Senate’s Deputy Chairman Saleem Mandviwalla has announced that an order of 200,000 vaccines for Covid-19 has been placed to administer vaccine to parliamentarians, the staff members of the Senate and their families.
In a media interaction, the deputy chairman said the order has been placed through the embassy of China in Pakistan.
He further said that he had asked Dr Faisal Sultan, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health if the government was unable to decide and procure, the private sector should be allowed to acquire it.
Dr Sultan made it clear the government had already given approval and the private sector could procure, he further said. Therefore, we have placed an order for the Chinese vaccines for the Senate members, staff and parliamentarians, he said.
Pakistan has so far approved three coronavirus vaccines — the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, the vaccine developed by Chinese state-owned firm China National Pharmaceutical Group (SinoPharm) and Russian-developed Sputnik V.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s parliamentary secretary for Health has revealed that China has assured to supply Covid-19 vaccine before the end of January. Chinese government has assured that it will supply 500,000 vaccines to Pakistan by January 31, said Dr Nausheen Hamid adding in the first phase, frontline health workers will be administered vaccine shots. So far, we have registered more than 300,000 health workers in the country.
