Health Minister Zahid Maleque and three other ministers received Covid-19 vaccine jabs on Sunday after the nationwide inoculation drive kicked off.
Zahid Maleque inaugurated the drive shortly after 10am on Sunday through video conferencing from the Health Directorate in Dhaka.
Later, he, Agriculture Minister Abdur Razzaque and Science and Technology Minister Yeafesh Osman took shots of coronavirus vaccine at Sheikh Russel National Gastroliver Institute and Hospital in the capital's Mohakhali.
Meanwhile, Jute and Textiles Minister Golam Dastagir Gazi, along with his wife, was jabbed with the vaccine at National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases on the same day.
Bangladesh by now received five million doses of expected 30 million doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured by Serum Institute of India (SII) apart from two more million jabs received as a gift from the neighbouring country.
Bangladesh eventually is expected to get 68 million or 6.80 crore vaccines for 20 per cent of its population or 3.40 crore people from the WHO, COVAX facility.
The frontline workers are to get the vaccines on a priority basis in line with a list with officials saying they included 452,027 government health workers and approved 600,000 private health workers.
