Bangladesh
DGDA approves Moderna Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use
Dhaka, June 30: The Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA) in Bangladesh has approved the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine for emergency use in the country on Tuesday, a press release said.
With this, the Moderna vaccine became the eighth vaccine to receive emergency use authorization from the health authorities.
The release said the vaccine can be taken by people over 18 years of age. The Moderna Covid-19 vaccine is a two-dose jab, to be completed within four weeks.
The preservation temperature of the vaccine is between 15°C and 25°C.
The DGDA approved the vaccine after America began shipping 25 lakh doses of Moderna vaccine to Bangladesh on Tuesday, a White House official told AFP.
A small scale vaccination program started in Bangladesh on January 27 and the mass drive began on February 7.
Initially, Bangladesh used the Covishield covid-19 vaccine- the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab manufactured and marketed by the Serum Institute of India (SII).
However, the government had to suspend the first dose of the vaccine in the country on April 25, after the Indian company stopped exporting it, following a huge spike in the country's coronavirus cases and deaths.
The shortage of Covishield jabs has left a significant number of people waiting across Bangladesh for their second dose of the vaccine.
Meanwhile, the country has received a consignment of 100,620 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, under the COVAX scheme run by WHO and Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
Dhaka has also collected the Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine from China. Beijing has so far sent 11 lakh doses of the Chinese vaccine to Bangladesh as gift in two shipments.
Bangladesh is also negotiating with Russia to buy their Sputnik V vaccine.