Staff Reporter :
As Bangladesh sees a surge of Covid-19 infections, the government is speeding up the pace of its national vaccination programme in a bid to head off further deaths from the virus.
As part of the move, the health authorities on Saturday kicked off an extended mass vaccination drive aimed at inoculating 35 lakh (3.5 million) people in six days.
Confirming the information Director General of Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Professor Dr Abul Bashar Mohammad Khurshid Alam said, “The nationwide Covid-19 mass vaccination campaign began at 9:00 am this (Saturday) morning and it will continue till 3:00 pm. People are receiving vaccines from designated centers spontaneously.”
He said Covid jabs will be administered simultaneously in 4,600 unions, 1,054 municipality areas and 433 wards of the city corporations.
“Citizens above 25 years of age will be vaccinated, but priority would be given to the elderly, the women and physically-challenged persons during the six-day campaign,” said Khurshid.
Between 8 and 9 August, jabs will be given to the residents of the excluded wards of unions and municipal areas where already the campaign was underway, officials said.
Between 10 and 12 August, Rohingya refugees above 55 years will get the Covid jabs.
The vaccination campaign, which initially began on February 7 this year, progressed slowly because of an erratic supply of vaccines.
Some 44.5 lakh (4.45 million) people have been fully vaccinated with two shots and 1.45 crore (10.45 million) people have received the first dose since the inauguration of the mass inoculation drive, according to Our World in Data.
Earlier in April, the government was forced to suspend administering the first dose of the Covid vaccine after the Indian government deferred the shipment of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to Bangladesh.
On 13 December, 2020, Bangladesh signed a deal with the Serum Institute of India to purchase 30 million (3 crore) doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and the country was supposed to receive five million (50 lakh) doses a month as per the deal.
Referring to the Health Ministry, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen on Thursday said that Bangladesh has a stock of 1.23 crore (12.3 million) vaccine doses and some of them (Oxford-AstraZeneca) will be kept for the second dose.
He further said that Bangladesh will receive another consignment of 34 lakh (3.4 million) doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine next week and 60 lakh (six million) doses of the Pfizer vaccine in the first week of September.
“We are planning to vaccinate 80 per cent of the country’s total population by 2022,” Director General of DGHS Prof ABM Khurshid Alam told the media.
He said Bangladesh was already set to purchase roughly 140 million vaccine doses by June next year while the rest of the required jabs were expected to be procured in the subsequent months to implement the plan.
The DGHS chief said the procurement process was already underway by reaching deals with different countries and companies.
He said agreements were finalized to get 30 million vaccines from China’s Sinopharm, 10 million Sputnik V of Russia, 70 million Johnson & Johnson and 6.5 million Pfizer of the US and three million AstraZeneca dose.
Bangladesh recorded 248 more deaths due to Covid-19 on Saturday, up from 212 logged a week earlier.
As of August 7, Bangladesh has recorded 22,411 Covid-19 deaths and 13,43,396 cases.
