Pakistan approves AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use
Agencies | Islamabad
The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com
AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine has been approved for emergency use in Pakistan, the health minister said on Saturday, making it the first coronavirus vaccine to get the green light for use in the South Asian country.
Pakistan, which is seeing rising numbers of coronavirus infections, said its vaccines would be procured from multiple sources, said Reuters.
DRAP granted emergency use authorisation to AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine,” the health minister, Faisal Sultan, told Reuters.
Approval has been given to get more than a million doses of Sinopharm’s vaccine from China, he said. “We are in the process to obtain Western origin and other vaccines both via bilateral purchase agreements as well as via the COVAX facility,” he said.
The Chinese vaccine is awaiting approval from the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP), which has received and reviewed its data.
Pakistan is speaking to several vaccine makers, and Sultan said the country could get “in the range of tens of millions” of vaccine doses under an agreement with China’s CanSinoBio.
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