The Russian coronavirus vaccine ‘Sputnik’ approved by the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) is expected to reach Pakistan in two weeks, reported 24NewsHD TV channel on Sunday.
So far Pakistan has approved three coronavirus vaccines including from China and Russia.
Head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund Kirill Dmitriev said Sputnik-V is the world's first registered coronaviurs vaccine and the vaccine has an emergency use certificate while it is 91.4 percent effective, the TV channel reported.
Earlier, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi announced that China promised to provide 0.5m Chinese made COVID-19 vaccine shots to Pakistan. The Chinese vaccine is expected to reach by January 31.
According to BBC, Hungary has become the first country in the European Union to give preliminary approval to the Russian coronavirus vaccine, Sputnik-V. Early results from trials of the Sputnik vaccine have shown promising results.
As per the Sputnik-V official website, Sputnik-V is the world’s first registered vaccine based on a well-studied human adenoviral vector-based platform. It currently ranks among top-10 candidate vaccines approaching the end of clinical trials and the start of mass production on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) list.
The Sputnik-V vaccine’s efficacy is confirmed at 91.4% based on data analysis of the final control point of clinical trials. Requests for more than 1.2 billion doses of the Sputnik-V vaccine came from more than 50 countries. The vaccine is named after the first Soviet space satellite.