Over 10m doses fly in to boost vaccine coffers

In a major boost to the national vaccine coffers, Pakistan has received more than 10 million doses from China, including 6.1 million Sinopharm jabs delivered under the United Nations’ COVAX arrangements, officials have said.

The large shipments of the vaccine doses have arrived in the country over the past three days, the official said. Overall, the consignments comprised 8.1 million doses of Sinopharm jabs and another 2 million jabs of SinoVac.

Pakistan has stepped up the national vaccination campaign in recent months in the wake of a deadlier and fast-spreading fourth wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, which was fuelled by the Indian-origin Delta variant of coronavirus.

The National Command and Operation Centre (NCOC) – the government nationwide strategy to contain the pandemic spread – said that the number of active Covid cases had been on the rise in the recent week, reaching 88,588 on Monday.

Read Covid resurge and Punjab

During the last 24 hours, the NCOC said in its daily update of the disease that 3,669 more people tested positive for the virus while 2,218 people recovered from the disease, taking the national caseload to more than 1.1 million, including 989,013 recoveries.

The national positivity ratio was recorded at 6.8%.

Among the active cases, it said that 5,216 patients were admitted to 639 Covid-dedicated health facilities across the country. According to the update, 4,787 patients were in critical condition, including 463 on ventilators.

Also during the past 24 hours, 72 patients, of them 62 in hospitals, including 28 on ventilators, breathed their last, raising the nationwide death toll to 24,478.

The forum said that most of the deaths, 26 occurred in Sindh, followed by 25 in Punjab.

(WITH INPUT FROM APP)