Bangladesh to receive 5.9m more vaccine doses in July through COVAX

Bangladesh will receive 5.9 million vaccine doses under the COVAX global vaccine sharing initiative in July, says Health Minister Zahid Maleque.

The consignment consists of 3 million doses of Moderna vaccine and 2.9 million of Pfizer vaccine, he said.

“They’ll let us know two or three days prior to sending the vaccines. We don’t know the exact date.”

Another consignment of vaccines from Chinese company Sinopharm will also reach Bangladesh in July, the minister said.

“We hope to get a big consignment of vaccine doses this month, which we were supposed to get in monthly consignments when we bought them previously (from the Serum Institute of India). Once we get them, we will have a good stock of vaccines,” he said.

COVAX authorities organise the shipment of the vaccines themselves, but Bangladesh needs to arrange the transportation for the Sinopharm doses by air, the minister said.

Bangladesh started its mass vaccination campaign in February, using the COVISHIELD vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca. But the programme was subsequently halted after India banned vaccine exports to tackle a growing COVID crisis within its own borders.

The inoculation drive resumed after the country received consignments of Sinopharm and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.

As of now, Bangladesh has approximately 15.9 million doses of coronavirus vaccines, including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Sinopharm vaccines.