ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has been approved to start corona vaccination in the first quarter of next year.
A special cabinet committee in Islamabad has approved the formation of a monitoring committee to procure corona virus vaccine. The Ministerial Committee had its second meeting with Planning Minister Asad Omar, which was also attended by Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Chaudhry and Industry Minister Hamad Azhar. Dr. Sania Nishtar and Special Assistant for Health Dr. Faisal Sultan also attended the meeting.
The meeting reviewed the overall situation of various vaccines available in Corona. The committee was informed that several countries had already booked the COVID-19 vaccine based on preliminary or incomplete results. In some cases, vaccines were pre-booked during the preparation phase to ensure availability.
The meeting was briefed on the deliberations of the committee constituted by the Drug Regulatory Authority (DRAP) which is in the process of reviewing and analyzing the data available from the clinical studies conducted so far. The data is presented for final review for emergency use.
The committee has decided to book the corona vaccine in advance based on the data and timely availability provided by the Chinese company SonoFirm. Once approved and purchased, the government will provide free Covid 19 vaccine to all frontline health workers in the first quarter of 2021.
It was also decided at the meeting that other manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccine would work for further booking for the remaining phases of vaccination based on more data and availability.
The committee reiterated that the private sector would also be encouraged to approach DRAP and follow the procedure laid down to allow emergency use of any available and safe COVID-19 vaccine.
On the other hand, Federal Minister for Planning Asad Umar said in his tweet that a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Procurement of Vaccines was held in which it was decided that as soon as the expert committee of DRAP approved the vaccine, more than one million vaccines would be procured. Will be implemented. Which will be given to all front line health workers. The target is to start delivering the vaccine in the first quarter of 2021.