People who registered for coronavirus vaccine will receive the Pfizer-BioNTech jabs serially, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said on Monday.
“We are not giving the vaccine shots to any particular individual. People will be inoculated as per their serial at the four government-designated vaccination centres,” he told the media after a programme in Dhaka.
Bangladesh received over 1,00,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine on May 31 under the Covax facility, run by the World Health Organization and Gavi, the vaccine alliance.
Minister Maleque said the dilute of the vaccine would reach Dhaka on Monday night.
He hoped that China would send another 6,00,000 doses of Sinopharm vaccine to Bangladesh by June 13.
“We will start administering Pfizer shots after the Sinopharm vaccine consignment arrives,” he said.
Earlier on May 12, Beijing handed over half a million doses of its Sinopharm vaccine to Dhaka as a gift.
The minister said Bangladesh would sign a contract with Sinopharm provisionally for procuring 15 million doses in the next three months.
China’s Sinovac also showed interest to provide coronavirus vaccine to Bangladesh and partner with local pharmaceuticals to manufacture the jabs here, he said.
Maleque said that the Bangladeshi health authorities have already approved the emergency use of Sinovac and that discussion with Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech about the vaccine is at the initial stage.
Replying to a question, he said that the agreement for the Russian Sputnik V vaccine is yet to be finalised.
“Russia is positive. They will provide us the vaccine and want to manufacture it here,” he said.
Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen on Sunday said that Bangladesh is interested to swiftly import five million doses of the Sputnik V.
Bangladesh started its nationwide inoculation on February 7 with Covishield manufactured by the Serum Institute of India (SII).
SII was supposed to provide 30 million doses as per the agreement – five million a month between January and June this year – but it stopped exporting vaccine after an upsurge in Covid-19 cases and fatalities in India.
Bangladesh received seven million doses of Covishield through its contract. Besides, the neighbouring country gave Bangladesh 3.3 million doses as a gift.
Due to the export halt, the government kept administering the first dose of Covishield suspended since April 26, while a good number of people are waiting for their second shots.
Bangladesh on Monday recorded 30 deaths from Covid-19, taking the total fatalities to 12,869. Besides, 1,970 people tested positive for the virus, pushing the caseload to 8,12,960.
As many as 58,20,015 people were administered the first dose of Covishield while 42,16,696 received the second shot until Sunday, according to the health authorities.
Besides, 2,162 have received Sinopharm jabs so far.
