ISLAMABAD – Pakistan has approved second China-made COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health Dr Faisal Sultan said on Friday.
The Drag Regulator Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) had greenlighted the use of CanSinoBIO vaccine, weeks after it approved Chinese’ Sinopharm.
The government has also approved Russia’s Sputnik-V and the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine for emergency use.
The development comes days after the top health official shared the trial results of CanSinoBIO vaccine on Twitter.
He wrote, “Interim analysis by the Independent Data Monitoring Committee shows 65.7% efficacy at preventing symptomatic cases and 90.98% at preventing severe disease (multicountry analysis)”.
“In the Pakistani subset, efficacy at preventing symptomatic cases is 74.8% & 100% at preventing severe disease,” the special assistant added.
“The IDMC didn’t report any serious safety concerns, he said, adding that data included 30,000 participants and 101 virologically confirmed COVID cases,
Earlier this month, Pakistan kicked off a vaccination drive after receiving with 500,000 doses of Sinopharm’s vaccine donated by China.
Frontline health workers are being administered with the jabs of the vaccine across the country on a priority basis.
