ISLAMABAD-Another Chinese company CanSino has applied for the emergency use authorisation of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine with the Drugs Regulatory Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) on Monday.
The CanSino earlier also conducted COVID-19 trials in the country and it will be the second China based COVID-19 vaccine after the SinoPhram to be allowed emergency use in Pakistan.
Other than SinoPharm, the government has confirmed the arrival of the United Kingdom (UK) based AstraZenca vaccine from COVAX in the third week of the ongoing month.
The government has also confirmed that Russian based vaccine Sputnik-V vaccine has been also given emergency use authorisation, while in upcoming months United States (US) based Pfizer will be also available in Pakistan.
Officials at the Ministry of National Health Services (NHS) also said that CanSino has given application for the emergency use authorisation of the COVID-19 vaccine and DRAP authorization board will consider its application. Officials said that the DRAP will give approval of the emergency use authorisation of the CanSino vaccine in the next meeting.
Officials said that the CanSino has been manufactured in Chinese military medical sciences academy and its trials were conducted in Pakistan, Russia, Mexico, Chile and Argentina.
In Pakistan, CanSino clinical trials were conducted in Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad. Officials added that the CanSino is a single dose vaccine.
Special Assistant to the Prime Minister (SAPM) on NHS Dr. Faisal Sultan in his social media message said that clinical trial data (phase-3) of a one-dose Ad5-nCoV vaccine for Covid-19 (Cansino Bio) was received. Interim analysis by the Independent Data Monitoring Committee (IDMC) shows 65.7% efficacy at preventing symptomatic cases and 90.98% at preventing severe disease (multicountry analysis).
He said that in the Pakistani subset, efficacy at preventing symptomatic cases is 74.8% & 100% at preventing severe disease.
SAPM on NHS also added that the IDMC didn’t report any serious safety concerns. Data include 30,000 participants & 101 virologically confirmed COVID cases.
Meanwhile, DRAP in collaboration with the World Health Organization arranged a one-day training session on monitoring adverse events following immunization (AEFI) of COVID-19 vaccine.