Pakistan earned a whopping $10mn from conducting phase 3 trials of the Chinese vaccine CanSino, revealed Maj Gen Aamer Ikram.
Maj Gen Ikram, who is the head of the National Institute of Health (NIH) was speaking at a function in the city where he disclosed that many countries wanted to hold their phase 3 trials in Pakistan. “These experiments can bring millions of dollars into Pakistan,” he said. He said Pakistan had also started co-manufacturing the single-dose Adenovirus (Ad5)-vectored Covid-19 vaccine with CanSino Bio at the NIH Islamabad, and claimed that within a year, they were hopeful of earning around $30 million through the joint manufacturing of the vaccine in the country. “And this successful venture has opened doors of numerous more such opportunities for Pakistan and now several biotechnological companies from the UK, Korea, Japan and of course China are willing to conduct Phase-III clinical trials of their vaccines in Pakistan,” he said. Pakistan on Sunday reported the highest coronavirus positivity ratio since May 30 when the country recorded the ratio at 4.09%.
The NCOC, sharing the daily statistics on Sunday, said 1,980 coronavirus cases were detected from 48,382 tests conducted across the country in the last 24 hours. Twenty-seven deaths occurred in the last 24 hours, with the most recorded in Sindh followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, according to the NCOC’s data. The country has recorded a total of 973,284 cases, 22,582 deaths, 913,203 recoveries, the NCOC said, adding that there were 37,499 active cases. According to a province-wise breakdown, the total cases reported in Sindh so far are 346,360, Punjab 348,085, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 139,313, in Islamabad Capital Territory 83,647, in Balochistan 27,961, in Gilgit-Baltistan 6,851, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir 21,067.
