Special vaccination campaign starts today

The government has announced that a total of 32 lakh people, aged above 25, across the country will be inoculated under a special vaccination drive starting Saturday.

The new announcement scales down the government target to 32 lakh, which was previously set at one crore people, due to constrains in vaccine doses and manpower.

Speaking at a press briefing at the Bangladesh College of Physicians & Surgeons (BCPS) in Dhaka on Friday, Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Director General Professor ABM Khurshid Alam said anyone aged 25 years and above can vaccinated by showing their identity card during the campaign.

“The campaign would prioritise vaccinating the elderly, women and people with disabilities and those from hard-to-reach areas,” he added.

The announcement comes at a time when the country recorded 248 new deaths and 12,606 new cases in a span of 24 hours ending 08:00am Friday.

With the latest, the country’s total deaths from Covid-19 stand at 22,150 while the total number of positive cases is 1,335,260.

The vaccination campaign will start from August 7 at 4,600 unions, 1,054 municipalities and 433 wards of 12 city corporations.

Meanwile, August 8 and 9 have been kept reserved for inoculating people at ward-level.

Members of Rohingya refugee community, aged 55 years and above, will receive their jabs from August 10 to 12.

He said that a total of 32,706 vaccinators and 48,459 volunteers have been prepared so far for the vaccination campaign.

Officials said that a lack in manpower and shortage of vaccine had compelled the government to scale down its special mass vaccination dose campaign.

They said that the government currently has nearly 1.5 million doses of four types of vaccines, all double doses, in stock.

If the government vaccinates 1 crore people in a week, regular vaccination schedules would be hampered and second dose recipients, such as for AstraZeneca dose, might fall into a crisis.

The special vaccination campaign will run with China’s Sinopharm vaccine.

The health department formerly declared to reduce the age limit to 18 and to reach 1 crore people in seven-day vaccination campaign.

Health Minister Zahid Maleque repeatedly said the media about the ambitious target.

The Liberation War Affairs Minister AKM Mozammel Haque disclosed that 14,000 vaccination centres were prepared to complete the weeklong drive.

The minister also claimed that no unvaccinated person age above 18 would be allowed in public spaces from August 11, as the government plans to withdraw the on-going lockdown. However, the minister later withdrew his remarks.

While asked about it, DGHS DG Khurshid said that health department would not take responsibility of anyone’s comment on vaccine drive.

The DGHS requested people registered under regular vaccination programme to get their jabs from regular vaccination centres and not to crowd at the special vaccination centres to be set up under the extended vaccination programme.

Bangladesh has started mass vaccination on February 7. DGHS on Thursday said that so far 10289,797 people were given first dose of vaccine while 4443,517 of them were given their final dose.

Bangladesh has been administrating four vaccines – AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Moderna and Pfizer – under its national vaccination campaign.

The government plans to vaccinate 80 per cent of its 170 million population by March 2022.