islamabad pakistan on tuesday launched its homemade covid19 vaccine named pakvac which it developed with the help of its ally china in order to vaccinate people in the country and bring under control the spread of coronavirus cases in the nationspecial assistant health dr faisal sultan said that pakistan is trying to overcome the difficult challenges and turn them into opportunities with the help of friendswe found our friend china closest to us in overcoming the covid19 challenge he said at the launch ceremony here adding that china provided the raw material for the vaccine but still it was not easy to develop itdr sultan said the local mass production of the vaccine will begin in the coming daysasad umar chief of national command and operations centre ncoc said it was an important day for pakistanthe development came as the positivity rate fell below 4 per cent for the first time in three months when 1771 new cases were reported in the last 24 hours taking the tally of confirmed cases to 922824 according to the ministry of national health servicesthe vaccination has also picked up and so far more than 73 million doses have been administered to over 53 million people vaccinated including about 2 million fully vaccinated