(Adds quotes on CanSinoBio, latest COVID-19 numbers,
background)
By Asif Shahzad
ISLAMABAD, Jan 16 (Reuters) - AstraZeneca's COVID-19
vaccine has been approved for emergency use in Pakistan, the
health minister said on Saturday, making it the first
coronavirus vaccine to get the green light for use in the South
Asian country.
Pakistan, which is in the midst of a second wave of
coronavirus infections, has said it would procure more than a
million doses of Sinopharm's vaccine, but the Chinese
vaccine has not yet been approved by the Drug Regulatory
Authority of Pakistan (DRAP).
"DRAP granted emergency use authorisation to AstraZeneca's
COVID vaccine," the country's health minister, Faisal Sultan,
told Reuters.
Pakistan is in the process of speaking to a number of
vaccine makers, and Sultan said the country could get "in the
range of tens of millions" of vaccine doses under an agreement
with China's CanSinoBio.
The vaccine company's Ad5-nCoV COVID-19 candidate is
currently nearing completion of phase III clinical trials in
Pakistan.
Pakistan reported 2,432 new coronavirus infections and 45
deaths on Friday, taking the total number of cases to more than
516,000 and deaths close to 11,000.
(Reporting by Asif Shahzad;
Writing by Gibran Peshimam;
Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Helen Popper)
Astrazeneca (AZN)