Islamabad gets 3m doses of Pfizer vaccine donated by US

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has received three million doses of coronavirus vaccine, Pfizer, donated by the United States under Covax facility, on a day when 85 more deaths and as many as 4,553 new cases of Covid-19 were reported from across the country.

With national positivity rate of coronavirus being at 7.4 per cent, the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) on Thursday urged the masses to get fully vaccinated so that herd immunity can be attained as the country has already administered over 50 million doses of vaccine. “For best protection against Covid, complete vaccination is a must. Get your second dose after 28 days (even if you don’t get message, just walk in to any nearest CVC and get your second dose),” said the NCOC in a tweet.

For the Pakistanis who received shots from abroad, a facility was launched on Thursday allowing them to get their immunisation records registered in National Immunization Management System (Nims).

In the past seven months, 14 million people in Pakistan have been fully vaccinated, and 38 million have received a first dose of vaccine against the coronavirus. The government-led campaign relies on vaccines procured via Covax and through bilateral agreements.

The latest three million doses of Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine, donated by the US government, were delivered by the Covax facility that pledged to provide free vaccine to 20pc population of Pakistan.

According to a statement issued by Unicef, over the past four months Covax has delivered more than 17 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine to Pakistan. This includes 3 million doses of Pfizer and 5.5 million doses of Moderna donated by the US under Covax’s dose-sharing mechanism; 6.1 million doses of Sinopharm, 2.4 million doses of AstraZeneca and 100,160 doses of Pfizer Covid-1