In near future, Pakistan might be able to vaccinate people against novel coronavirus via a locally manufactured vaccine named 'PakVac'.

Yesterday, The Special Assistant to Prime Minister on National Health Services Dr. Faisal Sultan announced that Pakistan has developed a new homemade vaccine called ‘PakVac’ with the help of China’s pharmaceutical company Cansino Bio after numerous testing and evaluation.

Pakistan's de-facto health minister congratulated the authorities behind the welcoming development via his official Twitter handle, he wrote:

Congratulations to the NIH Pak team and its leadership for the successful fill/finish (from concentrate) of the Cansino vaccine with the help of Cansino Bio Inc. China.

Sultan further added that the vaccine had passed the mandatory rigorous internal quality assurance testing. Sharing a picture of the PakVac, he tweeted:

The product has passed rigorous internal QA testing. An important step to help in our vaccine supply line.

Last month, National Institute of Health (NIH) officials had said they would start the local production of CanSinoBio's novel coronavirus vaccine in May.

According to the NIH officials, the latest vaccine was made with the help of Chinese experts after the raw materials were transported to Islamabad earlier in May. The raw materials were acquired from China to produce the local version of the CanSinoBio’s coronavirus vaccine.

According to an NHS official source, it is said that due to the agreement on technology transfer, the NIH would be able to produce over 3 million doses of ‘PakVac’ per month. If the government can pull this off in the next few weeks it will be significant in reducing the country's dependency on the imported COVID-19 vaccines.