ISLAMABAD: Saudi Arabia has expanded the list of vaccines against Covid-19 to include two Chinese-made vaccines Sinovac and Sinopharm, Gulf News reported.
According to its Ministry of Health, the vaccines now recognised in the Kingdom are Oxford-AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, Sinopharm, and Sinovac.
The ministry said those fully inoculated with the Chinese-manufactured vaccines could be accepted in the Kingdom provided they have obtained a booster dose of one of the other vaccines approved in Saudi Arabia.
The step is set to benefit Pakistani workers who have received shots of Chinese vaccines back home.
The Saudi Ministry of Interior also allowed direct entry of fully vaccinated expatriates to return to the Kingdom from countries with which flights had earlier been suspended.
The expatriate returnees must have obtained two doses of vaccine against Covid-19 in Saudi Arabia before they left it.
The countries with which Saudi Arabia had earlier suspended flights due to the crisis are India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Egypt, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the UAE, Ethiopia, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Lebanon.
