ISLAMABAD: Minister for Interior Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed on Sunday said Prime Minister Imran Khan was personally handling the matter of Saudi Arabia and other Middle East countries not accepting the certificate of the Chinese coronavirus vaccines.
Despite its quick and responsive supply chain, Chinese vaccines are not seen as effective by the European Union and Saudi Arabia who barred travellers who have been vaccinated with Chinese vaccines, leaving out the biggest groups of foreign visitors in the regions.
Last week, Riyadh updated its travel restrictions, which included requirements to take Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson in order to enter the country, leaving out China’s five vaccines, including the widely used Sinovac and Sinopharm.
Speaking to reporters in Islamabad, Rasheed said Imran had informed the cabinet that he was in talks with leaders of the respective countries on the matter.
His statement comes days after Minister for Planning and Development Asad Umar had announced the government would prioritise pilgrims and people travelling abroad for work or study for the Pfizer-BioNTech jabs due to the limited quantities of it available in the country.
Pakistan received the first batch of over 100,000 jabs of the Pfizer vaccine under the COVAX facility — which aims to help poorer countries fight the pandemic — late last month. The Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan approved the drug days later on June 1.
Umar had also warned that countries not accepting vaccination certificates of China-manufactured jabs would turn out to be a problem for the entire world, as the world is fast becoming ever more reliant on Beijing for vaccines, if a decision was not taken on the issue at the global level.
“If every country makes it mandatory for visitors to be inoculated by their choice of vaccine [brands], the entire world would suffer,” he said, observing that Chinese jabs were the most exported brands in the world at present.
Expressing similar views on Sunday, Rasheed said: “Sinopharm is a very good vaccine.”
The vaccination rollout is picking up momentum but vaccine hesitancy and a lax attitude of the people to health guidelines could hamper the fight against the pandemic.
Pakistan, despite being the world’s fifth-most populous country, has reported relatively low rates in terms of severity and deaths.
Today, Rasheed said Pakistan fared better than other countries in the region in terms of vaccination and particularly compared the situation in Pakistan with that in India, where he said one would come across signboards saying “no vaccination for seven days”, implying empty vaccine stocks.
“There is no signboard in Pakistan saying ‘no vaccination’,” he said.
He also pointed out that more people were willing to get vaccinated now and previously, there was “propaganda against vaccination” in the country.
The government launched a nationwide vaccination drive, starting with older people and frontline healthcare workers, in March. The drive began with a focus on the oldest people in the community, generally over the age of 80, and worked its way down.
Battling a third peak of the virus, the Health Department began the campaign with Chinese Sinopharm and CanSino jabs.
Private hospitals in major cities are also using the Russian Sputnik-V vaccine that has been imported by a local pharmaceutical company.
Initially, the government had to deal with vaccination hesitancy and a shortage of vaccine supplies and had limited shots to people aged 30 or over.
But with purchases from China and allocations from the World Health Organisation and the GAVI Vaccine Alliance, the government has now secured more than 18 million doses and is keen to get them out into the population.
The health authorities have administered 8.2 million vaccine doses with supplies from three Chinese companies — Sinopharm, Sinovac and CanSinbio — and the Oxford-AstraZeneca shots.
