Staff Reporter :
The government has approved a proposal in principle to procure China’s Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine under the direct procurement method.
The approval came from a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Public Procurement held virtually on Wednesday, with Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal in the chair. In response to a question from reporters after the meeting, the finance minister said the Health Ministry brought this proposal much earlier, the government could have avoided the DPM method and thus could have saved money.
“But, the Covid-19 is now continuing its havoc across the globe while new variants are coming every now and then. This procurement proposal of vaccines has been given approval in order to save lives of people and also to render health services,” Kamal said, adding that the Finance Ministry has urged all to maintain austerity during this difficult time of the pandemic.
The move came just a day after a government official revealed that Bangladesh will receive 106,000 doses of the Pfizer/BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine on June 2.
Cabinet Division’s Additional Secretary Dr Sahida Akhter told reporters that the proposal to procure Sinopharm’s vaccine was given approval considering protection of public health, reducing Covid-19 infection rate on emergency state purpose.
She said the meeting also approved a proposal in principle from the Health Services Division to procure some 40 oxygen generators under the DPM method for the Central Medical Stores Depot (CMSD) for treating Covid-19 patients.
Due to the vaccine shortage, the administration of the first dose in Bangladesh was suspended on April 26. The authorities have also suspended the vaccine registration process.
On May 12, as many as 500,000 doses of the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine, donated by the Chinese government to Bangladesh, had also arrived in Dhaka amid the shortage.
The health authorities currently have around 600,000 doses of the vaccine for the second shot, but over two million people are yet to get the second jab.
In light of the situation, the Bangladesh government has also sought immediate delivery of four million vaccine doses from the US, which plans to share up to 60 million doses of its Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine with other countries as they become available.
