Bangladesh launches mass vaccination at grassroots

The government on Saturday began Covid-19 mass vaccination drives at ward-level to inoculate 33.2 million people.

Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) spokesperson Shamsul Haque said that the vaccination drive began at 1, 10,664 vaccination centres in 4,611 unions across the country in the morning.

He said the vaccination will continue three days a week till March 1. “People will get jabs two days a week and a day will be reserved for women and children,” he said.

With the rise in Covid-19 positivity, the government decided to go for a grassroots-level vaccination drive rise.

The DGHS reported that at least four people died of Covid-19 and 370 people were detected as positive in 24 hours till Saturday 8:00am.

According to the fresh data, the total number of Covid fatalities jumped to 28,076, while the positivity rate stood at 2.43 per cent. The total number of caseloads jumped to 15,85,909 said a regular bulletin of the DGHS.

The health authorities reported the latest figures after testing 15,218 samples at 852 laboratories across the country.

At the same time, 203 patients recovered from the deadly infection in the last 24 hours, raising the overall recovery to 15,49,101.

Meanwhile, the global Covid cases rose to 288,236,877 and the fatalities reached 5,438,134.

Bangladesh first detected Covid on March 8, 2020, and declared the first death on March 18, 2020.

To combat the virus, the government started administering booster doses of the Covid vaccine on December 28.

Since December 11, Bangladesh so far detected 10 patients with Covid’s new variant Omicron. The government also planned to vaccinate school students aged between 12 and 18 by January 15.

Students were asked to complete their registration by January 6 to get the jabs.