China puts Pakistan as priority for Covid-19 vaccines' supply

ISLAMABAD – China has put Pakistan as its priority as Beijing announced to donate $100 million to COVAX, a global initiative launched to ensure equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines, for distributing vaccines to developing countries, said China’s Ambassador to Pakistan Nong Rong in a tweet on Tuesday.

Mr. Rong wrote: “First batch of vaccines provided to COVAX by China is being shipped to Pakistan！China will donate $100 million to the COVAX Facility for distributing vaccines to developing countries”.

“Our commitment: making vaccines a global public good, and put Pakistan as our priority,” he added.

First batch of vaccines provided to COVAX by China is being shipped to Pakistan！China will donate $100 million to the COVAX Facility for distributing vaccines to developing countries. Our commitment: making vaccines a global public good, and put Pakistan as our priority. pic.twitter.com/hj9eV6Xg2L

— Nong Rong (@AmbNong) August 10, 2021

Pakistan has so far received 5.5 million doses of the Moderna , 2.4 million doses of AstraZeneca and over 100,000 jabs of Pfizer as part of the COVAX effort.

Last month, COVAX agreed a deal with China to buy more than 100 million doses of Chinese vaccines.

In Pakistan, 86 additional individuals have died in the past 24 hours as a result of the ongoing fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, bringing the total death toll to over 24,000 people.

In the past 24 hours, 49,506 COVID-19 tests were performed throughout the nation, according to the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC). 3,884 of them were found to be positive.

The NCOC reports that the positivity rate is currently at 7.84 percent.

The number of fatalities from COVID-19 in the country has surpassed 24,000, with 24,004 cases reported, bringing the overall number of cases to 1,075,504.

Furthermore, 2,669 patients have recovered from COVID-19 in the past 24 hours, bringing the overall number of recoveries to 967,073, with 84,427 ongoing cases.

Pakistan on Monday received one million COVID-19 Antigen Rapid Diagnostic Test (Ag-RDT) kits donated by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).