The government has confirmed its previous plan to conduct a mass vaccination campaign against Covid-19 from Saturday to contain the rapid spread of the deadly virus in the country, the health ministry confirmed in a statement.
As per the latest decision, the mass campaign will commence on August 7 in all union, municipality and city corporation areas across the country.
The campaign will continue till August 9 in all city corporations.
On August 8 to 9, the programme will be conducted in wards of those unions that would have regular EPI (Expanded Programme on Immunisation) active on August 7, and in wards of those municipalities which missed vaccination earlier.
On the other hand, the vaccination drive will be conducted in remote and hard to reach areas from August 8 to 9.
The vaccines will be administered to people aged 25 or above excluding pregnant and lactating mothers.
People over 50, women and people with physical disabilities would be prioritised while giving out vaccines, the statement mentioned.
Meanwhile, Myanmar citizens aged above 55 in the Rohingya camps in Cox's Bazar will be jabbed from August 10 to 12 as part of the mass vaccination programme.
The Cabinet earlier on July 27 announced the decision to begin Covid-19 inoculation of rural people through Union Parishad from August 7 to bring one crore people under the programme.
Health Minister Zahid Maleque said it would be a walk-in vaccination programme as people would need no prior registration and be allowed to receive vaccine shots just by showing their national identity cards (NID).
However, on Thursday, the Director-General of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) Professor Abul Bashar Mohammad Khurshid Alam said the vaccination campaign would start on Saturday only as a trial run and it would not continue week-long.
He termed lack of enough vaccines and manpower crisis a bar to vaccination of the targeted number of people and said and the main special campaign would begin from August 14.
A countrywide inoculation drive was launched on February 7. So far, 1,00,09,953 people have received the first dose and 44,16,131 have received the second dose of the Covid-19 vaccine.
