Another five million doses of the Chinese Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine have arrived in Dhaka.
A Biman Bangladesh Airlines flight carrying the consignment landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 2am on Saturday.
The flight had left Tianjin Binhai International Airport on Friday night, the Chinese Embassy in Bangladesh said in a Facebook post.
With the new consignment, China has supplied around 25 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine to Bangladesh.
Bangladesh has so far received Sinopharm vaccine doses from China as gifts, under the Covax facility and commercial purchase.
On August 16, Bangladesh, China and Incepta Vaccine Ltd signed a memorandum of understanding on the coproduction of Sinopharm’s Covid-19 vaccine in Bangladesh.
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Bangladesh currently administers vaccines developed by four companies — AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Sinopharm.
Around 21.85 million people in the country have received their first dose of Covid-19 vaccine; of them, some 14.39 million have taken both doses, the latest DGHS data show.
The health authorities in Bangladesh have administered around 18.8 million doses of the Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine to date.
Coronavirus has so far claimed 27,147 lives and infected more than 1.5 million people in Bangladesh since the start of the pandemic last year.
Covid-19 vaccines cannot offer 100% protection, but when more people are inoculated there is less opportunity for the virus to infect and spread, say health experts.
Getting vaccinated can prevent severe cases, hospitalizations and deaths, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
