The United States will ship just over 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Pakistan via the COVAX global distribution program on Tuesday. With this shipping, the total number of doses the US sent to Pakistan would be around 8.5 million, a White House official said.
An additional 700,000 doses will follow, the official added.
Scientific teams and legal and regulatory authorities from both countries worked together to ensure the delivery of the 3,006,900 vaccine lots made by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, the official said.
The shipment is part of a U.S. vaccine diplomacy effort that has sent vaccines to dozens of countries. The doses will be delivered through the COVAX program, jointly run by the World Health Organization, the official said.
Pakistan has reported a total of 24,923 deaths by COVID-19 and 1.12 million infections, with infection rates fueled in recent weeks by the highly transmissible Delta variant.
About 13.4 million of Pakistan’s total population of 220 million have been fully vaccinated, according to the Our World in Data website.
Pfizer now fully approved FDA vaccine
The Food and Drug Administration granted full approval to Pfizer-BioNTech’s two-dose vaccine for people ages 16 and up, making it the first Covid-19 vaccine to pass this final regulatory hurdle.
“The FDA’s approval of this vaccine is a milestone as we continue to battle the Covid-19 pandemic,” acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock said in a statement. “While millions of people have already safely received Covid-19 vaccines, we recognize that for some, the FDA approval of a vaccine may now instill additional confidence to get vaccinated people. Today’s milestone puts us one step closer to altering the course of this pandemic in the U.S.”
Full coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic
Full approval may help persuade some vaccine-hesitant people to get vaccinated. A Kaiser Family Foundation survey from June found that 3 in 10 unvaccinated adults would be more likely to get the shots of fully approved vaccine.
