Mass vaccination campaign from Tuesday marking PM’s birthday

The government is set to launch a nationwide campaign from Tuesday to inoculate around 75 lakh people to mark the 75th birth anniversary of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Addressing a press conference, health minister Zahid Maleque on Sunday said that there is no vaccine crisis in the country and the people, who got registered for the vaccines, will get priority during the nationwide campaign.

Director general of the Health Directorate Prof ABM Khurshid Alam said, “The vaccination campaign will be conducted across the country as like the previous one.”

Health service officials said that the vaccine will be inoculated from 6,000 centres including 4,600 union parishads, 1,054 municipalities and also at the ward-level under all the city corporations.

With administering Sinopharm vaccine doses, the nationwide campaign will begin around 9:00 a.m.

So far, Bangladesh has received over 5.52 crore vaccine doses from different sources and administered over four crore doses among the people since the government started mass vaccination on February 7.

Earlier, 45 lakh people were vaccinated during a country-wide week-long mass vaccination campaign started on August 7.

Bangladesh will receive another 25 lakh doses of Pfizer’s vaccine from the United States of America under the Covax facility on Monday, said a press release on Sunday.

The vaccine will arrive at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport by a cargo plane around 10:15p.m from Florida, said the press release.

US Ambassador to Bangladesh Earl R. Miller and director general of the Health Directorate Prof ABM Khurshid Alam along with other health officials will receive the vaccines at the airport.

Bangladesh has received 11 lakh 4,480 doses of vaccine free of cost from the USA in two phases under the Covax facility.