In the past, we have been guilty of looking to procure vaccines from a single source, which resulted in delays to administering vaccines. To that end, it is certainly encouraging that Bangladesh is no longer looking at a singular source for vaccine procurement.
On Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s recent visit to France, it was announced that France agreed to provide two million more Covid jabs under the Covax facility. After the disaster that happened during April due to our reliance on a single source, this is good news indeed.
Bangladesh has made quite a remarkable recovery from the recent lockdowns, and 90 million vaccine doses have already been administered. This drive was successful because we were able to procure the vaccines we needed, and we were able to diversify our sources.
While the drive has run into some hurdles due to mismanagement and the scarcity of vaccines procured, the announcement from the PM ensures that the issues we have run into will no longer cause us problems.
Moreover, the fact that we are taking our diplomatic missions all over the world and making sure that our sources for vaccines don’t run out means that we have learned our lesson thoroughly, and we can be hopeful that what happened during the beginning of the year won’t happen again.
We need to keep the vaccination drive rolling. We need to keep procuring vaccines as we can only get rid of this pandemic for good once everyone is vaccinated. We have already achieved the impossible since our mass vaccination drive a couple of months back. It’s time we take it all the way.