Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal has told the parliament that the government will gradually provide Covid-19 vaccine to all Bangladeshi citizens, above the age of 18, at free of cost.
He also informed that the Health Ministry has approved the draft plan for vaccine distribution and preparations for successful inoculation have already been completed.
The finance minister said this while presenting a report on budget implementation progress, trend of income, expenditure and economic analysis of the first half (July-December) period of the current fiscal at the parliament, media reports say.
Earlier on in the morning, Health Services Division Secretary Abdul Mannan confirmed that the shipment of 2 million doses of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine gifted by India will arrive in Bangladesh on Thursday afternoon.
On Tuesday, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said the Covid-19 vaccination program will start in Dhaka first after the arrival of the vaccines from India, and then the campaign will be spread out across the country later.
Meanwhile, the daily test positivity rate for Covid-19 has again sunk below 5% in Bangladesh in 24 hours between Monday and Tuesday.
A total of 702 people tested positive for Covid-19 over the same period, taking the total number of cases in Bangladesh to 529,031. The overall infection rate of the country stands at 15.18%.
The country has also registered 20 new deaths due to Covid-19 in the 24 hours, raising the total death tally to 7,942.