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Pakistan Receives 500,000 Doses Of Chinese COVID-19 Vaccine


Boxes of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine for COVID-19 are unloaded from a Pakistan Air Force plane on arrival at Nur Khan Airbase in Rawalpindi on February 1.
Boxes of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine for COVID-19 are unloaded from a Pakistan Air Force plane on arrival at Nur Khan Airbase in Rawalpindi on February 1.

Pakistani officials say a military plane loaded with half a million doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine has landed in Pakistan, ahead of a planned national inoculation campaign.

Faisal Sultan, who advises Prime Minister Imran Khan on health issues, tweeted on February 1 that health workers will be first in line to be inoculated.

China, a neighbor and ally, has announced that it would donate the first batch of the vaccine to Pakistan.

Pakistan's Health Ministry announced last week that the country had also secured 17 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Also on February 1, elementary and middle schools reopened across Pakistan for the first time since November 25, when the country was experiencing a second wave of coronavirus infections.

Schools from grade 9 to 12 already reopened on January 18.

As of February 1, the authorities reported more than 546,000 coronavirus cases and over 11,600 related deaths.

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