News Desk :
The health authorities in Bangladesh have administered 8,926,466 Covid-19 vaccine doses so far since the start of the inoculation campaign.
Till Tuesday, 5,819,757 people had received their first dose of the vaccine, while 3,106,709 people had received their second dose, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
A total of 83,578 people were administered the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine on Wednesday and none of them had shown any side effects, said the DGHS.
Altogether 7,248,829 people had signed up to be immunized against the infectious disease till 5:30pm on the day, it added.
Bangladesh launched its nationwide vaccination drive on February 7. The Covid-19 vaccine is administered every day from 8:30am till 2:30pm at government designated inoculation centres.Emergency hotline numbers for receiving information on vaccination are 16263, 333 and 10655.
Bangladesh recently approved China’s Sinopharm and Russia’s Sputnik V Covid-19 vaccines for emergency use amid uncertainty over further shipments of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine from India.
Nearly one and a half million people will likely have to wait for the next consignment of Covishield, the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by Serum Institute of India (SII), for their second dose under the government’s vaccination program.
SII suspended the export of Covishield in late March owing to domestic demand at a time when Bangladesh was scheduled to get its third shipment.
One of the spokespersons for Covid-19 management at DGHS, Dr Mohammad Robed Amin, who is also line director of the DGHS’s NCDC unit, told Dhaka Tribune on Monday: “If more than 100,000 people are vaccinated every day, the remaining vaccines can be administered for around 7 to 10 days.”
Meanwhile, the government maintains that the import of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine may resume soon, and, hence, the same vaccine can be administered as the second dose.
