Covid-19 Vaccination

Bangladesh receives another 50 lakh Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine doses

Dr Shamsul Haque, member secretary of the Vaccine Deployment Committee, said officials from the Directorate General of Health Services had received yesterday's consignment of vaccines and sent them for storage in cold storage. In all, Bangladesh got a total of about two and a half crore from Sinopharm. Earlier on September 10 (Friday) a large consignment with 54 lakh doses of vaccine arrived in the country.

The government has agreed to buy 3 crore doses of Sinopharm. Besides, Bangladesh is also getting the Sinopharm vaccine through Covax. On May 12, 5 lakh doses of vaccine came to Bangladesh as a gift from the Chinese government. That was the first shipment of the Sinopharm vaccine. Later, on June 13, another 6 lakh doses of vaccine came as a gift.

Six more consignments of the vaccines arrived in July after the 11 lakh dose vaccine arrived. Of these, 10 lakh doses on the night of July 3, 10 lakh doses on the morning of July 4, 10 lakh doses at 11:45 pm on July 17 and 10 lakh doses on another flight at 3:00 am on the September 18 reached Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport. Then at the end of the month, on July 29 and 30, another 30 lakh doses of the vaccine came. In the next month, 17 lakh doses were received on 10 August, 17 lakh doses on 12 August, 10 lakh doses on 13 August and 20 lakh doses. The first shipment of Sinopharm vaccine arrived in the country on September 10 this month. That consignment of 54 lakh vaccines is the largest consignment of Sinopharm vaccines in the country so far.

On February 7, the government launched a nationwide mass immunization program with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine. In addition to Oxford-AstraZeneca, Chinese Sinopharm, Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are being administered in the United States.