Special Correspondent :
Bangladesh has fully vaccinated 27.2 per cent of its adult population with two Covid-19 jabs although it set a target to vaccinate 80 per cent of its population by 2022 under an accelerated inoculation campaign.
However, the country is lagging behind its South Asian (SA) neighbours in terms of the proportion of fully vaccinated population.
Among neighbours, Bhutan stands at the top after inoculating 73.3 per cent of its population with both doses, followed by 68 per cent vaccinated in the Maldives, 63.2 per cent in Sri Lanka, 44.3 per cent in India, 33.4 per cent in Nepal and 32.6 per cent in Pakistan, according to Our World in Data.
Afghanistan fully vaccinated only 9.6 per cent of its total population, the lowest proportion among South Asian nations.
As of Sunday, the first dose has been administered to 7, 44,83,000 (70.44 million) people and the second dose has been given to 5,28,43,000 (50.28 million) people with Oxford AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Sinovac, Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, according to the ministry of health and family welfare.
Besides, a total of 1,17,740 people have been administered Covid-19 booster doses by this time.
“We’re confident to achieve the target within the estimated timeline as the mass vaccination programme has already been accelerated with availability of Covid-19 vaccine jabs,” a senior health ministry official told The New Nation yesterday preferring not to be named.
He said, “Nearly a million of people are now being vaccinated everyday and the number is increasing gradually.”
When asked, he said, “There is is no shortage of vaccine supply in the country and we’re hopeful about getting a significant quantity of vaccines by this month under agreements we signed with manufacturers”.
He said, Bangladesh would purchase 140 million vaccine doses within June this year and expect to procure the rest required jab quantum in subsequent months to implement the plan to vaccinate 80 per cent of its population by 2022.
“Bangladesh has already reached deals with different countries and companies as part of the procurement process to vaccinate the target 130 million people,” added the official.
He also said that the country is also in process to collect 68 million vaccine doses from COVAX facilities.
Bangladesh rolled out Covid-19 vaccination drive on 27 January 2021 with health care workers getting inoculated in the first phase while mass vaccination started on 7 February 2021. But the vaccination drive slowed down as the government ordered to stop administering the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine after India suddenly banned the export of the vaccine.
The mass vaccination drive resumed in June 2021 after China extended support and donated Sinopharm vaccines.
