A new consignment of 2 million doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine will arrive in Dhaka on Saturday night.
Member Secretary of the Vaccine Deployment Committee of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Dr Shamsul Haque confirmed it to the Dhaka Tribune.
With this 2 million, Bangladesh will purchase 15 million Sinopharm vaccines from China with a lower price that was set initially.
Bangladesh has so far received 3.1 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine and 1.1 million as a gift from China.
Bangladesh is supposed to get another one million vaccines as gift from China, the foreign minister confirmed to the media last week.
On May 12, China sent 500,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccine to Bangladesh as a gift. On June 13, Bangladesh received another 600,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccine from China, also as a gift.
On July 2, Bangladesh received two million doses of the vaccine in the first official shipment.
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On Wednesday, the Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase approved the purchase of a total 15 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine from Sinopharm International of China.
The country has so far approved eight Covid-19 vaccines for use in its fight against the disease that has killed almost 17,000 people.
Bangladesh has so far received 10.3million doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine from the Serum Institute of India – 7 million doses as part of contractual shipments and 3.3 million doses as gifts.
The SII is supposed to supply 30 million doses to Bangladesh as per the contract, but they have been unable to send consignments since late March as the vaccine doses were required to combat the pandemic in India.
Ito Naoki, Ambassador of Japan in Bangladesh, recently posted on Twitter that the Japanese government would provide 2.9 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine under Covax facilities to Bangladesh. It is hoped that the vaccines will arrive this month, according to Health Ministry sources.
On Wednesday, 293 people received a second dose of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, taking the total to nearly 4.295 million. Meanwhile, a little over 1.525 million people received the first dose of the vaccine and are awaiting the second dose.
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Additionally, 104,763 people received the first dose of the Sinopharm vaccine during the same period, taking the total to 373,016 till now, while 2,259 people received the second dose till Sunday.
Meanwhile, 6,714 people were administered the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, taking the total to 36,566.
On the other hand, 26,690 people received the first dose of the Moderna vaccine in the 24 hours to Wednesday morning.
Health Minister Zahid Maleque on Saturday confirmed that the authorities had reached an agreement with Russia to collect a significant amount of vaccines this month. Besides, the country would get 6 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine early next month, he added.
