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ISLAMABAD: A special Pakistan Air Force plane carrying 500,000 doses of the Chinese SinoVac COVID-19 vaccine landed at the Nur Khan Airbase in Islamabad, said foreign office spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri in a Twitter post on Thursday.
According to a brief statement issued by the National Command and Operation Center, the vaccine was not donated by the authorities in Beijing but was procured by the Pakistani government.
Pakistan began its vaccination drive earlier this year by prioritizing its frontline health workers and elderly citizens after receiving the first batch of China's Sinopharm vaccine as a gift from its longtime ally in the beginning of February.
The country mostly utilized the same vaccine to run its immunization campaign, though the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) also authorized the emergency use of China's Convidecia, United Kingdom's AstraZeneca and Russia's Sputnik V vaccines.
DRAP also approved the SinoVac vaccine earlier this month, even as it was said to have a low efficacy rate.
Pakistan is currently experiencing the third wave of the pandemic which has been described by the authorities as more dangerous than the ones before.
Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday met with his planning minister Asad Umar and advisor on health Dr. Faisal Sultan to discuss the coronavirus situation in the country.
According to the local media, Khan called a meeting on Friday to coordinate the government's strategy to fight COVID-19 which will also be attended by provincial chief ministers and secretaries.
The country's planning minister already maintained in a news conference on Wednesday that the COVID-19 positivity rate had reached alarming proportions in all major urban centers, adding that the government could impose strict restrictions to curb the spread of the disease.
Umar also said that any decision on possible lockdowns could be announced on Friday.