WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States will ship just over 3 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine to Pakistan via the COVAX global distribution program on Tuesday, bringing the total number of doses sent there to around 8.5 million, a White House official said.
An additional 700,000 doses will follow, the official said. It was not immediately clear when they would be shipped to Pakistan.
Scientific teams and legal and regulatory authorities from both countries worked together to ensure the delivery of the 3,006,900 vaccine lots made by Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech, the official said.
The shipment is part of a U.S. vaccine diplomacy effort that has sent vaccines to dozens of countries. The doses will be delivered through the COVAX program, jointly run by the World Health Organization, the official said.
Pakistan has reported a total of 24,923 deaths by COVID-19 and 1.12 million infections, with infection rates fueled in recent weeks by the highly transmissible Delta variant.
Only 6.2% of 13.4 million of Pakistan’s total population of 220 million have been fully vaccinated, according to the Our World in Data website.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Michael Perry and Alison Williams)
