Pak working on single-dose COVID-19 vaccine with China’s help: Official

Islamabad, April 14

A senior Pakistani official has said that the country was working to develop its own single-dose coronavirus vaccine with China’s support, a media report said on Wednesday.

Executive Director of National Institute of Health (NIH), Major General Aamer Ikram, said this during a briefing to the National Assembly (NA) Standing Committee on National Health Services on Tuesday, The Express Tribune reported.

“We are going to make a single-dose vaccine for COVID-19. We conducted the clinical trial of Chinese COVID-19 vaccine CanSinoBio in Pakistan,” he said.

Later talking to the media, Ikram said Pakistan was among the first countries to take part in the clinical trial of CanSinoBio vaccine.

He said Pakistan had requested China to transfer the technology for the vaccine and the raw material for the vaccine is going to arrive this month.

“We hope that we will be able to take some measures for preparation of the vaccine by the end of April.

“Our team is ready to undertake this task while a Chinese team has also arrived in Pakistan. The Chinese team will oversee our team at the NIH,” he said.

Briefing the parliamentary panel, Ikram said the NIH plant, which was closed a few years back, has been made functional again and once the plant is ready, the process for manufacturing the COVID-19 vaccine will begin.

“The NIH is going to make its own single-dose vaccine in the near future,” the official said.

The NA committee lauded the NIH’s efforts and declared it good news for the nation.

Pakistan has so far administered vaccines to 1.3 million people but still needs to go a long way before its 220 million people will be inoculated. PTI

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