Bangladesh receives first COVID-19 vaccine consignment from India
(Sourced from PTI)
Bangladesh on Monday received the first consignment of the five million doses of Covishield vaccines from India under a procurement agreement, four days after New Delhi gifted two million doses of the vaccine to Dhaka. Bangladesh has so far purchased 30 million doses from the Serum Institute of India through the private Beximco Pharma under a tripartite agreement.
A special Air India flight carrying the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine co-manufactured by Serum Institute of India reached the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport, Dhaka, earlier in the day to be initially stored at a warehouse of private Beximco Pharma Ltd. ahead of their planned countrywide distribution.
Beximco Pharma's Managing Director Nazmul Hassan told reporters after receiving the consignment at the airport, "The vaccines are being transported to Beximco warehouses in Tongi on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka in special freezer vans." Health officials said the government experts would check the vaccine samples to see if any temperature fluctuation affected their efficacy and the expiry dates.
A Health Ministry statement said, "Beximco Pharma will send the vaccines to civil surgeons at all of the 64 (administrative) districts after obtaining certificates from the Drug Administration." Zahid Maleque, Health minister of Bangladesh had earlier said, "Bangladesh is expected to get 50 lakh vaccines every month from India in the coming months." Bangladesh will start the nationwide COVID-19 vaccine distribution from early February.
Officials said that they have formed 7,344 distribution teams comprising six health workers each, while about 42,000 health workers are being trained. Bangladesh has reported more than 532,000 coronavirus cases so far with over 8,000 deaths.
In the last few days, India, which is one of the biggest drugmakers, has sent consignments of domestically produced coronavirus vaccines under grant assistance to Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Mauritius, and Seychelles. It is also undertaking commercial supplies of the doses to several countries, including Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Brazil, and Morocco.
