[FALSE] Are all the vaccines in Pakistan procured from China?

Screenshot of the Facebook post.

The Claim and Our Verdict

• The claim: A video was shared Nov. 2, 2021, on Facebook, along with the claim that vaccines in Pakistan are all procured from China.
• Fact-checking:
  • Eight COVID-19 vaccines have been approved for use in Pakistan— Moderna, Sinopharm, CanSino, Sinovac, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, PakVac, and SputnikV vaccines—of which the Modena, AstraZeneca, SputnikV, and PakVac vaccines have not yet been manufactured or rolled out in China, and the Chinese government has not purchased these four vaccines, either. Thus, these four vaccines could not have been procured from China.
  • Pakistan has obtained COVID-19 vaccines through COVAX (an international cooperative program formed to make sure low- and middle-income countries have fair access to COVID-19 vaccines), other countries’ donations, local manufacture, and other channels. Pakistan’s vaccines come from at least five countries, namely, China, the United States, Switzerland, Sweden, and Norway. Thus, not all are procured from China.
• Our ruling: Therefore, we rate the claim as FALSE.

News Brief

A video was shared Nov. 2, 2021, on Facebook, along with the claim that vaccines in Pakistan are all procured from China. The caption translates as, “A Chinese guy was asked to jump the queue when waiting to get the jab in Pakistan.”

As of the issuance of this report, the post had been shared 21 times and had received 8 comments and 290 likes or reactions.

Fact-checking

According to the COVID-19 vaccination page of the website of Pakistan’s National Command Operation Center (NCOC), there are currently eight COVID-19 vaccines approved for use in Pakistan: the Moderna, Sinopharm, CanSino, Sinovac, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, PakVac, and SputnikV vaccines. The Moderna vaccine was developed by Moderna Inc., a U.S. pharmaceutical and biotech company; the Sinopharm vaccine is manufactured by the Beijing Institute of Biological Products, China National Pharmaceutical Group Corporation; the CanSino vaccine is manufactured by CanSino Biologics Inc.; the Sinovac vaccine is manufactured by Sinovac Biotech; the AstraZeneca vaccine was co-researched and developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca plc.; the Pfizer vaccine was co-developed by BioNTech and Pfizer, and is distributed by Fosun Pharma in the Greater China area; the Pakistan-manufactured CanSino vaccine is branded as PakVac; the SputnikV vaccine was developed by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Russia.

Currently, China has approved five COVID-19 vaccines, including the Sinopharm, Sinovac, and CanSino vaccines. The Pfizer vaccine is only available in Hong Kong and Macau; the Sinopharm and Sinovac vaccines are available in Macau and Hong Kong, respectively. However, as of the issuance of this report, the Moderna, AstraZeneca, SputnikV, and PakVac vaccines have not been manufactured or rolled out in China, nor has the Chinese government purchased any of these vaccines. Thus, these four vaccines available in Pakistan could not have been procured from China.

COVAX is an initiative that aims to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines and to guarantee rapid, fair, and equitable access to them. COVAX is co-led by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations; Gavi, a vaccine group; and the World Health Organization (WHO), alongside key delivery partner UNICEF.

Pakistan’s vaccines are procured at least from the following countries:

In addition, according to the official website of Gavi and the official twitter account of UNICEF, over 1 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccines, more than 100,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine, 1.2 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, and 6.1 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine were delivered to Pakistan via COVAX on May 8, May 28, Jul. 17, and Aug. 11, 2021, respectively. Meanwhile, according to a tweet published Nov. 2, 2021, by Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), 15 million doses of the Sinovac vaccine, 2.6 million of the CanSino vaccine, 1.48 million of the Pfizer vaccine, and 1 million of the SputnikV vaccine arrived in Pakistan between Oct. 29, 2021, and Nov. 2, 2021.

According to the announcement issued by Pakistan’s National Institute of Health and a news article published by Reuters, Pakistan started to manufacture China’s CanSino COVID-19 vaccine, branding it as PakVac, on June 1, 2021. It is estimated that 1 million doses per month are being manufactured. Pakistan signed a deal with CanSinoBio in March 2021 to import a concentrate of the vaccine in bulk to process and package the vaccine locally.