Bangladesh expects to receive another 5.4 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine by August 15, says Health Minister Zahid Maleque.
Speaking to the media on Monday after the weekly Cabinet meeting, he said that a consignment of 3 million jabs under the Covax scheme and 2 million shots of the Sinopharm vaccines are expected to arrive.
“We have decided to procure a total of 60 million Sinopharm jabs from China, including the previously purchased 30 million doses,” said the health minister.
Responding to a query, Maleque said appointment SMS for vaccinations are sent depending on availability of vaccines.
“People will get the SMS faster, once more vaccines arrive,” he added.
Bangladesh kicked off its nationwide mass vaccination campaign on February 8 this year with Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine doses manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII).
SII was supposed to supply a total of 30 million doses to Bangladesh in phases.
However, after sending only seven million doses, the supply stopped due to a ban by India on vaccine export.
The health minister said that they are still uncertain about the future of vaccines bought from SII.
Also Read - Maleque: Bangladesh will buy 60 million more Sinopharm vaccine doses from China
Till now, Bangladesh has received seven million Sinopharm vaccine doses under a purchase agreement of 30 million.
Besides, China has also sent 1.1 million Sinopharm doses as a gift in two consignments in July.
Vaccination progress
Till Sunday morning, a total of 27,079 people received the second dose of Oxford-Astrazeneca vaccine, taking the total number of people fully vaccinated with this vaccine to over 4.371 million, with another 1.449 million waiting to get the second shot.
Additionally, 249,451 people received the first dose of Sinopharm vaccine during the same period, taking the total number of Sinopharm jab recipients to a little over 5.817 million till now. Meanwhile, 114,293 people received the second dose.
A total of 50,255 people received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. On the other hand, 4,674 people received the second dose of the vaccine till 8am on Sunday, taking the total to 11,712.
The Moderna vaccine was given to 283,721 people, taking the total number of Moderna shot recipients to over 1.385 million.
The health authorities in Bangladesh reported the first three cases of Covid-19, a severely acute respiratory disease caused by a strain of coronavirus named Sars-CoV-2, on March 8, 2020.
The fast spreading coronavirus has claimed more than 4.3 million lives and infected over 203 million people across the world till Monday noon, according to Worldometer.
As many as 182.501 million people have recovered from Covid-19, which has spread to 220 countries and territories across the planet.
