The government has announced its plans on preserving the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine once it arrives in the country from India.
ABM Khurshid Alam, director general of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), revealed the information on Tuesday, according to media reports.
He said: "The vaccines will be stored at the Central Medical Stores Depot (CMSD) in Tejgaon, the head office of the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI) in Mohakhali, and the storage unit of the EPI in Tejgaon."
The Covid-19 vaccines are required to be preserved in cold temperatures as in a walk-in cooler.
The DGHS said currently there were walk-in coolers in 29 districts of the country.
More walk-in coolers are being set up at 18 more districts. The DGHS expected all of them to be ready before more vaccines arrive.
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Additionally, every district and upazila has ice-lined refrigerators (ILRs). Vaccines would be stored in ILRs at the upazilas and would be transported in separate frozen boxes, the DGHS said.
Moreover, ILRs are available in 463 EPI centres across the country, where vaccines will also be stored.
In addition, arrangements have been made to rent cold storages from Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC) and other places to increase the capacity at the national level, according to the DGHS.
Earlier, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said additional storage would be provided for by Unicef.
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He said the vaccines to be received by Bangladesh from the Indian government as a gift would arrive in the city on Wednesday or Thursday.
Meanwhile, Serum Institute of India (SII) was expected to export its first lot of Oxford-Astrazeneca Covid-19 vaccines to Bangladesh by January 25-26.
In the initial stage, there were preparations to vaccinate 200,000 people per day at the district and upazila levels, the health minister said.
Four vaccination teams will work at district level, two in each upazila, and six teams in each hospital.
