KARACHI: In the latest development, the government of Pakistan has approved the emergency use of Russian Sputnik V against COVID-19.
This is the third vaccine which has been approved by the Drug Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP). In the last seven days, the regulatory authority has also given green light to Oxford Astra Zeneca and Chinese Sinopharm for emergency use.
“Sputnik V is the world’s first registered vaccine based on a well-studied human adenoviral vector-based platform. It currently ranks among top-10 candidate vaccines approaching the end of clinical trials and the start of mass production on the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) list.”
A spokesperson for DRAP, Akhtar Abbas Khan said, “The country’s technical committee has cleared and recommended the vaccine to the drug registration board.”
The clinical trials of Sputnik have already been announced in Belarus, India and UAE. In Russia, 40,000 volunteers registered for its post-registration clinical trials.
Currently, Pakistan is facing a second wave of COVID-19. Since the start of the pandemic, more than 11,000 people have succumbed to this deadly virus in the country.
