Bangladesh is set to receive 2.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine under Covax facilities within the next 7-10 days.
Health Minister Zahid Maleque confirmed the matter to DBC, a national television channel, on Friday.
He said: “We have received a letter today [Friday] from Covax following an application that we submitted in June last year. They will provide us with 2.5 million doses of the Moderna vaccine.
“The vaccine will be provided within 7 to 10 days.”
Moderna vaccine is a mRNA vaccine that has been developed by ModernaTX, Inc of USA, but is yet to get approval for emergency use in Bangladesh.
This is a two-dose vaccine and administered within 28 days. The unpunctured vials (varied from 11 to 15 doses) may be stored in the refrigerator between 2° and 8°C for up to 30 days.
The minister said he has asked the officials to take necessary measure to approve the vaccine for emergency use before it arrived.
If so, Moderna vaccine would be the sixth vaccine that would get approval for emergency use in the country. Till now, five vaccines – Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sputnik-V, Sinopharm, Pfizer-BioNTech and Sinovac – have been approved by the authorities.
When asked, Zahid Maleque said that the government was expecting vaccines from China within the next few days as well.
Bangladesh has administered over 1.01million oxford AstraZeneca vaccines.
Among them, 5.82 million people got their first dose while 4.28 million got their second jabs. Over 1.4 million people are waiting to get their second dose.
According to the DGHS, the government has administered 8,071 doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine as first dose and 368 people of them got the second dose.
Some 240 people have got the first dose of the Pfizer-Bio-NTech vaccine till now.
