The country is facing a shortage of the Covishield vaccine invented by Oxford AstraZeneca and the crisis is unlikely to end anytime soon, the Health Services Division has said.
“We do not think the solution is easy because we have not yet got the amount of vaccine doses we were supposed to from India. It is not possible to get the vaccine from other sources as well,” said Prof Robed Amin, the spokesperson of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) on Monday.
Bangladesh had a contract with the manufacturer of the Covishield vaccine Serum Institute of India to receive 5 million doses every month. However, due to India’s increasing need for the vaccine the pharma company was unable to supply the doses.
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So far, Bangladesh has received 10.2 million doses of Covishield vaccine from India.
According to the Health Services Division, 10,505,949 doses of the vaccine have been administered till June 27. Till now 5,820,015 people have taken the first dose of Covishield vaccine. On the other hand, 4,287,126 people have taken the second dose of this vaccine.
Now, 92,859 doses of the vaccine are in stock now.
It is to be mentioned that the national coronavirus vaccination program started on February 7 in the country. Vaccination activities run every day from 8:30 am to 2:30 pm.
The DGHS had announced that the first dose would be discontinued from April 26 due to the vaccine crisis and registration for the vaccine has also been suspended since May 2.
