London — Pakistan will purchase 1.2 million Covid-19 vaccine doses from China’s Sinopharm, a minister said on Thursday(31), the first official confirmation of a vaccine purchase by the South Asian country as it battles a second wave of infections.

China approved a Covid-19 vaccine developed by an affiliate of state-backed pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm on Thursday, its first approved shot for general public use.

“The Cabinet Committee has decided to initially purchase 1.2 million doses of the vaccine from the Chinese company Sinopharm, which will be provided free of cost to frontline workers in the first quarter of 2021,” Pakistani minister for science and technology Chaudhry Fawad Hussain said on Twitter.

The minister told Reuters the purchase would be of the vaccine candidate developed by Sinopharm’s Beijing Institute of Biological Products.