Special vaccination drive in wards starts today

The government has planned to extend its Covid-19 vaccination campaign to the ward level from today.

Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) spokesperson Shamsul Haque said the target was to vaccinate 33.2 million people by March 1.

He said 1,10,664 vaccination centres were prepared in 4,611 unions across the country and each would vaccinate 300 people.

The government came up with the decision to start the special inoculation drive after Covid-19 cases had risen recently.

In a span of 24 hours till Thursday, the health directorate detected 509 cases after testing 22,667 samples and recorded seven deaths.

On December 11 last year, Bangladesh detected the Omicron variant in two cricketers of the national women’s cricket team who had returned from Zimbabwe.

To combat the virus, the government started administering booster doses on December 28 last year.

It has also planned to vaccinate school students aged between 12 and 18 by January 15.

Students were asked to register by January 6 to be jabbed.

A total of 28,070 people have died of Covid-19 in the country so far while 15,85,027 have been infected. The positivity rate stands at 2.25 per cent.