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By Asif Shahzad
ISLAMABAD, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Russia's Sputnik-V has become
the third COVID-19 vaccine to be approved by Pakistan for
emergency use after China's Sinopharm and the one developed by
AstraZeneca and Oxford University, the country's health minister
said on Tuesday.
"Sputnik has received EUA (emergency use authorisation),"
the minister, Faisal Sultan, told Reuters in a WhatsApp text
message.
The Russian vaccine is administered in two shots, three
weeks apart, has a six-month shelf life and is stored at -18
Celsius.
A fourth vaccine candidate, developed by CanSino Biologics
Inc (CanSinoBIO), has also completed clinical trials in the
South Asian nation of 220 million people.
CanSino trials have shown 65.7% efficacy in preventing
symptomatic cases and a 90.98% success rate in stopping severe
cases of the disease in an interim analysis of global trials,
Sultan said on Monday.
He said its efficacy in the Pakistani subset at preventing
symptomatic cases was 74.8% and was 100% for preventing severe
disease.
The efficacy of the CanSino shot is based on an analysis of
30,000 participants and 101 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in
Pakistan, the minister said, citing an independent data
monitoring committee.
CanSinoBio's single-dose regimen and normal refrigerator
storage requirement could make it a favourable option for many
countries. Sultan said Pakistan could get shots "in the range of
tens of millions" under an agreement with the Chinese firm.
Pakistan has already rolled out a vaccination drive with
500,000 doses of Sinopharm donated by longtime ally China, and
expects to receive further donations of more than one million
doses.
Frontline health workers are receiving the first of the
shots as priority.
The Pakistani military has also received a separate donation
of the Sinopharm vaccine from the Chinese army. The military did
not say how many doses the donation comprised but said it would
hand them over to the government to provide to health staff.
Pakistan has also secured 17 million doses of the
AstraZeneca vaccine under a global scheme to deliver coronavirus
treatments to developing nations.
(Reporting by Asif Shahzad
Editing by Gareth Jones)
