Nearly three million Sputnik V shots administered in Pakistan, authorities say

ISLAMABAD, January 26. /TASS/. Residents of Pakistan have been vaccinated over 2.9 million times with Russia’s coronavirus-fighting Sputnik V inoculation, the National Command and Operations Center for COVID-19 (NCOC) reports. Another 1 million doses of the jab will soon be used to inoculate the population against the virus. Pakistan now has 6 million doses of Sputnik V, the Dawn newspaper reported on Wednesday, citing NCOC data. Earlier, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said Islamabad was interested in producing the Russian vaccine at Pakistani facilities. "Russia has done a wonderful job of helping the world fight the pandemic, the Sputnik vaccine is a step forward in this direction," he said. "We are looking to attract investments in Pakistan and, if possible, to produce the Sputnik vaccine in our country." The Russian jab is imported by Chughtai Lab, a private medical organization based in Lahore. It is supplied through the Pakistani firm Ali Gohar Pharmaceuticals (Pvt) and the Russian Direct Investment Fund. Sputnik V is one of seven vaccines approved for emergency use in Pakistan. The others greenlighted for use in the country include China’s Sinovac, Sinopharm, and CanSinoBio, the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot, and US-based vaccines Pfizer and Moderna. According to the NCOC’s statistics, more than 183 million doses of vaccines have been administered in Pakistan. Some 103 million people have received at least one dose, of whom more than 80 million have been fully vaccinated. Over the past 24 hours, 5,196 people in Pakistan have been infected with the coronavirus and 15 have died. During the pandemic, a total of 1,386,348 cases were reported in the South Asian country, along with 29,137 deaths. Read more