Bangladesh to receive 2m more Sinopharm vaccine doses from China Saturday

Bangladesh is set to receive two million more doses of the Sinopharm coronavirus vaccine from China on Saturday.

Shamsul Haque, a line director at the Directorate General of Health Services, said on Friday the flight carrying the vaccines will arrive in Dhaka on Saturday night.

Bangladesh signed a deal with China for 15 million doses of the vaccine at $10 per shot. Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal on Wednesday said China was sending the shots at a lower price than previously agreed upon.

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 government received consignments of Sinopharm, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Moderna vaccines.

China sent had 1.1 million Sinopharm doses as gift, and two million more shots arrived in early July.

Although the government had said the two million shots were sent under the purchase deal, officials later confirmed these doses were also sent by China as a gift.

It means the two million doses arriving on Saturday will be the first commercial batch of vaccine from China.