After being agonized for several months, at last, Pakistanis have some good reasons to exult at. Pakistan has kicked-off the vaccination drive of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine while authorizing the emergency use of Russia’s homegrown Sputnik V.
A Pakistani military aircraft landed in the country carrying the first batch of the donation of half a million doses of Sinopharm vaccine from China.
Sinopharm is a Chinese state-owned company that has rolled out two major covid-19 vaccines around the world.
While addressing at the launch of the drive, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan congratulated the health team of government for timely securing the vaccine.
The premier maintained that health workers working at the front line with Covid-19 patients will be given preference for the inoculation.
However, a week after the approval for the Sinopharm vaccine, Pakistan has authorized the emergency use of Russia’s Sputnik V.
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As per the Drug Regulatory Authority Pakistan (DRAP), the data submitted by the Russian company has been referred to the authority’s registration board.
The board needs some clarification over the marketing rights while all the rest has been done, as per the spokesman DRAP.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Sputnik vaccine has shown high levels of efficacy with being 91.6% effective in preventing the novel coronavirus.
The two-shot Sputnik- V vaccine has no serious side effects and has been found similarly effective for the elderly as well.
As per the British medical journal the Lancet, Russian shot has been found equally effective as the vaccines developed by Moderna Inc. and Pfizer Inc that have shown 95% efficacy.
So far, the Sputnik V has been jabbed to more than two million people around the globe with nearly 15 countries authorizing it outside Russia.
When the pandemic breakout, Pakistan was among the countries that were expected to be clobbered by the virus but through effective strategy, the country managed to overcome the pathogen.