Two Weeks After Receiving First Dose Of Chinese Covid-19 Vaccine, Pak President Arif Alvi Tests Positive For Coronavirus

Pakistan President Arif Alvi announced that he has tested positive for the novel coronavirus, about two weeks after he was inoculated against the disease.

In a tweet on Monday (29 March) evening, the President wrote: "I have tested positive for Covid-19... Had 1st dose of vaccine, but antibodies start developing after 2nd dose that was due in a week. Please continue to be careful."

Also taking to Twitter, the President's wife Samina Alvi, who had also received the jab on 15 March along with her husband, confirmed that she has tested negative and quarantining.

"We had our vaccine 1st dose done but it takes time to build immunity & I request everyone to please continue to get vaccinations done & practice SOPs," she added in the tweet.

On 20 March, Prime Minister Imran Khan tested positive for the virus, just two days after he was vaccinated.

President Alvi and Khan were administered the Chinese vaccine, Sinopharm.

Pakistan is currently facing a third wave of the pandemic and the national positivity rate on Monday was recorded over 11 per cent whereas individual positivity rate of some of the districts was recorded higher than 20 per cent, according to the country's National Command and Operation Center (NCOC).

NCOC chairman Asad Umar said earlier this month that most of the cases in the country are of the British Covid-19 variant.

Pakistan has so far registered a total of 659,116 coronavirus cases and 14,256 deaths.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)