A special cabinet committee has been formed to oversee the procurement of COVID-19 vaccine.
As per details, a five-member cabinet committee has been formed under Asad Umar – Federal Minister for planning and development.
The committee will act as an oversight body regarding the procurement of COVID-19 vaccine, and its decisions will not require federal cabinet’s approval.
Other committee members include Fawad Chaudhry, Hammad Azhar, Sania Nishtar and Dr Faisal Sultan.
The development comes as earlier, federal cabinet approved US$ 150 million for the procurement of COVID-19 vaccine.
Pakistan has also approached ‘Gavi’, the Vaccine Alliance – a public-private global health partnership for COVID-`19 vaccine availability in Pakistan.
Ministry of Health, government intends to apply to COVAX, the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools (ACT) Accelerator – a project being led by Gavi.
Meanwhile, Federal Parliamentary Secretary NHSR&C – Dr Nausheen Hamid on Wednesday, confirmed that COVID-19 vaccination will start in Pakistan by April 2021 next year and that government will provide the coronavirus vaccine free of cost to the people.
Clinical trials are already underway in Pakistan of ‘Ad5’ vaccine – a COVID-19 vaccine Chinese company CanSino Biologics and the Institute of Biology at the China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences.
The Ad5 vaccine contains a modified strain of adenovirus (cold virus) comprising of genetic material of COVID-19 coronavirus.
Once exposed, the cells of the vaccine recipient will initiate generating coronavirus protein and the immune system will begin attacking these coronavirus proteins.
