Drug regulators in Pakistan rush to register Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine

THE drug regulators of Pakistan will register the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine on Tuesday (1) after its sudden arrival under the COVAX initiative.

Pakistan has registered Sinopharm, Sinovac, Cansino, AstraZeneca, and Sputnik-V vaccines for use and after registration; Comirnaty will be the sixth vaccine.

On Friday (29) over 100,000 Pfizer vaccines reached the country and the senior officials were unaware of its arrival.

Following the sudden arrival of Pfizer shots, the drug regulatory body in the country has called a meeting of its registration board on June 1 to register the Pfizer vaccine.

Some Pakistani officials said the arrival of the Pfizer vaccine was illegal as the country's regulatory authority had not issued a clearance certificate or registered the vaccine, Dawn reported.

Under current rules, no medicine or vaccine could be imported in Pakistan without it being registered by the regulatory authority or issuance of a clearance certificate, said an official of the drug regulatory authority of Pakistan.

"The certificate is issued after getting an application along with a certificate of analysis, quantity of medicine, batch numbers of medicines, etc. Under the second statutory regulatory orders (SROs), hospitals are allowed to import unregistered drugs, but they too have to get clearance certificates after providing details of patients, certificate of analysis, quantity of medicine, etc," the official added.