Bangladesh to get another 600,000 AstraZeneca COVID jabs from Japan Tuesday

Another 616,780 doses of AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine are on their way from Japan to Bangladesh.

Staff Correspondentbdnews24.com
Published : 2 August 2021, 08:13 PM
Updated : 2 August 2021, 08:13 PM

A cargo flight carrying the shipment, the third from Japan, took off from Narita International Airport around 9pm on Monday, the Bangladesh embassy in Tokyo said.

The vaccines will arrive in the country via Hong Kong on Tuesday, the embassy said.

The government on Monday began administering the second doses of AstraZeneca shots arriving from the island nation under the global COVID-19 vaccine-sharing initiative COVAX.

Along with the latest shipping, the number of doses arriving from Japan totalled to 1.6 million. As many as 1.5 people lined up for their second jabs in Bangladesh on Sunday.

Bangladesh started its mass vaccination campaign in February, using the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and Anglo-Swedish company AstraZeneca, bought under an agreement with the Serum Institute of India.

The government struck a deal for 30 million doses of Covishield vaccine from the Serum Institute. But following the arrival of 70 million doses from Serum, the agreement fell through as the pandemic situation in India worsened dramatically and put a halt to vaccine exports.

Apart from that, India also gifted 3.2 million doses of the shot to Bangladesh in two phases.

The inoculation drive resumed after the government received consignments of Sinopharm vaccine from China, and Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines under COVAX.

The second phase of the mass inoculation programme with the Sinopharm doses began at 67 centres across the country on Saturday. China sent 1.1 million shots as gift on May 12 and Jun 13.

However, the timeline for those who took their first shots with AstraZeneca was disrupted as no other vaccine could be administered on them.

Earlier, Japan shipped a total of 1.02 million doses in two separate consignments as part of its promise to gift Bangladesh with a total of 3 million shots under the COVAX platform.