ISLAMABAD: Days after Punjab Minister for Health Dr Yasmin Rashid generated concerns by suggesting the Chinese Sinopharm may not be risk-free, State Minister for Health Dr Faisal Sultan on Thursday said that the jabs were not recommended for individuals over the age of 60.
His statement comes a day after the government began the distribution of half a million state-owned Sinopharm doses donated by China simultaneously in all provinces and administrative units of the country.
Speaking to reporters, Dr Faisal said that a government expert committee after considering the preliminary analysis of Sinopharm data had recommended the shots be distributed among people aged 18-60 “at this stage”.
“At this stage, the [committee] did not authorise the vaccine for people older than 60,” he added.
Dr Faisal observed this was not an “unusual” scenario. “When new medicines come, they have some restrictions or such things and the basis is whether that population or people with certain conditions were included in the research for it,” he said.
“So we hope that when we get more data, perhaps it will be used for people above 60 as well.”
In a similar development in Norway, health authorities on Thursday announced they will not offer the AstraZeneca vaccine, co-developed by the University of Oxford, against Covid-19 to people over the age of 65.
Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH) said there had been few participants above the age of 65 in the trial conducted by AstraZeneca, meaning there was a lack of documentation as to the effect of the vaccine on older age groups.
Pakistan received its first tranche of the Sinopharm shots on Tuesday. The shipment marked the first shots to be imported into the country where more than 550,540 cases of the disease have been reported since the outbreak in February last.
In addition, the government is due to receive a further 1.1 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine by the end of February, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi had announced late last month.
Separately, Dr Faisal had last week announced the government has secured 17 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine through the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) COVAX initiative.
Of these, he had said, about seven million doses will be available in the first quarter of the year and the rest by the end of 2021.
As per the roll-out plan, the vaccine will first be made available to more than 400,000 doctors and frontline healthcare workers, teachers and social workers because they run the highest risk of exposure to the contagious disease.
After that, the shots will be provided to citizens over the age of 65, who generally face a higher mortality risk from the virus.
In place of Sinopharm, the government will offer AstraZeneca vaccine to people over the age of 60, Dr Faisal confirmed to a publication.
“When our Pakistani experts looked at the data they were reasonably satisfied with the AstraZeneca data but felt that [based] on the presently available numbers for Sinopharm, the data did not justify its usage for those aged over 60,” he said. “The Chinese have also reiterated this restriction.”
He said, however, that these were “complex matters”, and it was unlikely that a homogeneous perspective would be seen regarding vaccine administration around the world.
On Wednesday, a pulmonologist and Covid-19 expert, Shazli Manzoor, told AFP that the Chinese vaccine suited Pakistan because it could be stored at between 2C and 8C (36 and 46 Fahrenheit), compared to -70C for other vaccines.
He said the government would set up special clinics to monitor how the population was responding to the vaccinations.
Some doctors have questioned the effectiveness of the vaccine.
“It [Sinopharm vaccine] lacks transparency and data compared to other vaccines,” another health expert told AFP.
NATIONAL INSTITUTE TO DEAL WITH EPIDEMICS:
During his presser, Dr Faisal suggested building a national institute to deal with future threats and challenges from epidemics and diseases like Covid-19.
He shared that the government had also made amendments to the law governing the National Institute of Health (NIH) in Islamabad so it could be upgraded. According to him, “good work” was being done at NIH but the government wanted to take it to “expert level”.
“We believe NIH can be a [combined platform] where six to seven institutes are working on their own expert areas but are cooperating with the [Ministry of National Health Services, Regulation and Coordination] and with its cooperation, new research [can be conducted].”
Listing some of the institutes that would come under “one umbrella”, he said they would include a national health laboratory, data centre, centre for disease control and a centre for biologics and biomedical technology.
“There [should] be one national institution to diagnose viral and bacterial infections so other labs can contact [it] and a proper system can be set up. A national health data centre has been created,” he said while recalling that the National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) had to “collect data haphazardly” but now a system had been developed for it instead.
He also highlighted the need for separate institutes to deal with biological technology, production of anti-venom and nutrition.
–With additional input from AFP and Reuters
