Staff Reporter :
Bangladesh expects first shipment of the Covid-19 vaccine by January 2021, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said it on Thursday.
As per the memorandum of understanding with India’s Serum Institute, the first batch of the Oxford-AstraZeneca’s vaccine will arrive in Bangladesh in January.
made an arrangement to bring the Oxford University invented vaccine through the Indian company. The government will bring in three crore doses of the vaccine firstly,” the minister said it during the inauguration of a measles and rubella immunisation campaign in the capital’s Mohakhali.
“We hope to receive the Covid-19 vaccines in the first quarter of the next month,” adding, the minister said, the World Health Organisation will also arrange the vaccine for 20 percent of our population.
It may take some time for those doses to arrive, but we will get those.
Replying to a query, the minister said, many other countries could not yet manage to get the vaccine.
As per the official data, the Oxford University and AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical company invented the vaccine successfully.
Another recent study of the vaccine published in The Lancet medical journal, showed the vaccine candidate’s efficacy was 62 percent for those given two full doses, and 90 percent for those given a half, then a full dose.
Pascal Soriot, the Chief Executive Officer of AstraZeneca, said the pharmaceutical company had begun submitting data to regulatory authorities around the world to seek early approval of the vaccine.
Meanwhile, Health Minister Maleque inaugurated the measles and rubella immunisation programme giving doses to several children.
The measles and rubella vaccination programme will begin on December 12 across the country and continue until January 24.
Children aged between nine months and 10 years will receive a single dose of the vaccine.
Immunisation will continue from 8 am to 3 pm on weekdays.
