Karachi: The government in Pakistan’s Sindh province has decided to place orders to procure two million doses of single-shot CanSinoBio vaccine from China for the people of Sindh.
The decision to this effect was reached at the meeting of the provincial Task Force on coronavirus in Sindh, held on Friday with Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah in chair. Health experts and representatives of the World Health Organisation attended the meeting.
Briefing media persons after the meeting, Sindh Law and Environment Adviser Barrister Murtaza Wahab recalled that the government had earlier shown its willingness to spend its own money to procure vaccine for protection of its people against the lethal virus, as soon as the permission was granted to procure the COVID-19 vaccine privately.
He said that the provincial Task Force had recommended that the federal government should simplify the regulatory mechanism for the private sector in the country to procure the vaccine.
Barrister Wahab, who also acts as the spokesman for the Sindh government, said the private availability of the vaccine would enable people who have the means to get vaccinated, adding that the government and the private sector in the country should join hands to ensure vaccination of the maximum number of people.
“The Chief Minister has directed the Health Department to do testing of people as aggressively as was being done last year during the first wave of coronavirus infections,” Wahab added.
He reiterated the demand of the Sindh government to restrict inter-provincial movement of people for two weeks for protection of people in Sindh and Balochistan where cases have been far fewer.
