Pakistan has secured 17 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine under the COVAX scheme, a minister said on Saturday.
Delivery will start in February and about 6 million doses will arrive by March, according to Asad Umar, the federal planning minister who is leading the country’s virus control efforts.
The remainder is expected to be received by the end of the year’s first half, he said on Twitter.
The COVAX facility is an initiative by the World Health Organization to ensure fair distribution of the coronavirus vaccines around the world.
Islamabad “signed with COVAX nearly 8 months back to ensure availability,” Umar added.
The development comes two weeks after Pakistan, where the virus caseload is over 543,200 and fatalities stand at 11,623, approved emergency use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
Pakistan is expecting the first installment of 1.1 million doses of the vaccine developed by China’s Sinopharm on Sunday.
Also, With Mexico becoming Thursday the third country in number of COVID-19 deaths in the world, the Americas have surpassed the dramatic milestone of one million casualties, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.
America has become the first world region to reach that mark, with roughly half of the nearly 2.2 million world’s deaths, followed by Europe with nearly 680,000 deaths, Asia (370,000), Africa (89,000) and Oceania (less than 1,000).
Carissa Etienne, director of the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), said that those were “a million people with hopes, dreams and a truncated future. A million families in mourning, many unable to say goodbye, who will feel their absence forever”. According to her, “The scars and lessons of this pandemic will remain with us”.
