BSS :
Bangladesh’s health authorities today said they were confident to vaccinate the country’s target 80 percent population by 2022 under an accelerated inoculation campaign, expecting receipt of required COVID-19 jabs within estimated timeline.
“We are hopeful about getting a significant quantity of vaccines by January next year under agreements we signed with manufacturers,” Director General of Directorate General of Health Service (DGHS) Professor Dr Abul Bashar Mohammad Khurshid Alam told BSS.
He said Bangladesh by now was set to purchase roughly 140 million vaccine doses within June next year and expect to procure the rest required jab quantum in subsequent months to implement the plan.
The DGHS chief said the country already reached or finalized deals with different countries and companies as part of the procurement process to vaccinate the target 130 million people. Under the agreements, he said, Bangladesh would get 30 million vaccine doses from China’s Sinopharm, 10 million Sputnik V of Russia, 70 million Johnson & Johnson and 6.5 million from Pfizer of the US and three million AstraZeneca from Japan.
Beside, Alam said, Bangladesh was collecting vaccines under 68 million doses from COVAX facilities free of cost as well though there still remained some hurdles in getting the jabs from that particular source.
The single shot of Johnson & Johnson vaccine completes the dose, meaning the 70 million people would come under the inoculation coverage with its inoculates while the other jabs required two shots for individuals.
Health officials said Bangladesh so far collected some 30 million vaccine doses.
“Nearly half a million of people are now being vaccinated everyday and the number is increasing gradually . . . we now have the capacity to immunize 10 million people every month as infrastructures were developed at grassroots.” the DGHS chief said.
The DGHS chief said they expect to vaccinate the target people in next 16 months without taking much into account the home production of inoculates under a co-manufacturing deal between Bangladesh’s Incepta and China’s Sinopharm.
Bangladesh launched a countrywide accelerated vaccination campaign easing receiving procedures on February 7 this year after the process was slowed down due to unavailability of inoculates.
