Bangladesh vaccinates over 3.6m in a month of COVID immunisation drive

More than 3.6 million people have received their first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine a month into Bangladesh’s mass immunisation drive.

They are among the more than 4.9 million people who have registered for the vaccine until Saturday since the process began on Jan 26, 2021, according to the Directorate General of Health Services.

The number of people who reported side effects after taking the jab is 825.

The government targets to vaccinate over 130 million people in the programme.

In the 44 hospitals of Dhaka, a total of 23,130 people got the vaccine on Saturday.

Division-wise, the highest number of 38,219 people received vaccine doses in Dhaka, 3,500 in Mymensingh, 17,101 in Chattogram, 10,119 in Rajshahi, 8,803 in Rangpur, 15,067 in Khulna, 4,166 in Barishal and 4,008 in Sylhet,

Nearly 2,400 teams of health workers and volunteers are running the programme in over 1,000 hospitals and healthcare centres across the country every day from 8am to 2:30pm, except on Fridays and public holidays.

The government has kept ready over 8,000 teams to continuously vaccinate the citizens. Each team can administer the jab to around 150 people per day, which means the DGHS has the capacity to give the doses to more than 300,000 people daily.

Armed with seven million shots of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca vaccine from the Serum Institute of India, including two million doses as gift, Bangladesh launched the mass immunisation drive on Feb 7, days after carrying out a dry run inaugurated by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Bangladesh received another two million doses bought from the Indian firm later. Serum will supply total 30 million doses in six months under the deal.