Vaccination of people aged 65 years and above to begin from March: Asad Umar

• Registration for coronavirus vaccination to be started next week
• Vaccination of persons who register will start in March
• Pakistan imported coronavirus vaccine doses from China a few days ago
  

  ---

ISLAMABAD: National Command and Operations Centre (NCOC) chief Asad Umar announced that the registration of coronavirus vaccination for people aged 65 years and above will begin from next week. 

Umar took to Twitter on Wednesday to share that the vaccination of people who register from next week for the coronavirus vaccination, their inoculation will begin in March. 

"Inshallah will be opening up registration next week for covid vaccination for those 65 years and above. The vaccination of those who register in this category will start in march," he tweeted. 

Pakistan receives second tranche of Sinopharm vaccines from China

Pakistan on Monday received half a million doses of the vaccine which were brought to Pakistan via a special flight of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force.

Pakistan had already received 500,000 doses of the Chinese vaccine, which is being used to inoculate frontline healthcare workers in the country. So far, over 12,000 frontline healthcare workers have already been vaccinated.

Health authorities in Pakistan had earlier confirmed that the country will get 6 to 7 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca’s AZD1222 vaccine by the end of the current month, which would be used to inoculate the remaining healthcare workers as well as people above 65 years of age.

Due to lack of data, the Chinese vaccine is not recommended for people above 60 years of age.

Health authorities had said that through the COVAX facility Pakistan was expected to get at least 17 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca’s vaccine, while it is also hopeful of getting a few hundred thousand doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s mRNA vaccine “BNT162b2” in donation, for which Ultra Cold Chain (UCC) equipment is also being acquired.