News Desk :
A consignment of another one million doses of the Sinopharm Covid vaccine gifted by China arrived in Dhaka on Friday evening.
A flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines brought the vaccine doses in Dhaka from Tianjin International Airport of China, said a press release signed by Tahera Khondker, deputy general manager (Public Relations) of Biman.
The press release said Biman modern aircraft Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner (BG-5065) carrying the vaccine doses and syringes landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka at 6:00pm on Friday.
Earlier, Hualong Yan, minister counsellor and deputy chief of mission at the Chinese Embassy in Dhaka, said
in a Facebook post: “One million (10 lakhs) doses of Sinopharm vaccines gifted by China to our Bangladeshi brothers and sisters have been loaded at Tianjin International Airport.”
It is for the third time that China has gifted Covid vaccine to Bangladesh.
On May 12, China gifted 500,000 vaccine doses to Bangladesh under the first phase. China gifted 600,000 vaccine doses to Bangladesh under the second phase on June 13. Under the third phase, China’s gift of 1 million (10 lakh) vaccine doses are coming today (Friday). With this, China has gifted Bangladesh a total of 2.1 million (21 lakh) vaccine doses directly.
Besides, China has gifted Bangladesh 34.70 lakh Sinopharm vaccine doses under the global initiative of COVAX.
Earlier, the United States sent Moderna and Japan sent Oxfortd-Astrazeneca vaccines to Bangladesh under the COVAX, while COVAX sent Pfizer vaccine directly.
On Wednesday, the Cabinet Committee on Public Procurement approved a proposal regarding the purchase of 60 million doses of Covid vaccine from Sinopharm.
Bangladesh is currently administering vaccines developed by four companies – AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Sinopharm.
