Bangladesh plans to administer Pfizer-BioNTech shots from next week

The Directorate General of Health Services or DGHS is planning to begin administering the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine by the end of next week.

Those who registered for coronavirus vaccines through the Surokkha platform will get the Pfizer doses, DGHS spokesman Dr Nazmul Islam said on Wednesday.

Bangladesh received the 100,620 doses of the vaccine under the global sharing platform COVAX on Monday night.

The developers of the drug claim that its efficacy has proven to be 95 percent in the final stage of the trials.

Despite the high efficacy rate, Bangladesh had initially showed little interest in buying the Pfizer vaccine considering the complexities related to store, transport and distribute the shots that require to be stored in a frozen state at -90 degrees Celsius to -60 degrees Celsius.

Finally it approved the vaccine last week after COVAX agreed to send the doses.

Officials said Bangladesh has the capacity to store 200,000 doses of the vaccine.

But the distribution must take place in Dhaka where the facilities with ultra-cold refrigerators are available.

Dr Nazmul said the facilities where the Pfizer shots will be administered have not been finalised from a shortlist.  

The authorities will finalise the list considering some facts, such as the distance from the storage and manpower. 

The vaccines have come to Bangladesh in a frozen state. They need to be unfrozen to regular temperatures and mixed into a solution before being administered.

After the mixture is prepared, it can be stored for six hours between 2 and 25 degrees Celsius.

The vaccine must be stored between -90 degrees Celsius and -60 degrees Celsius.

It can also be stored at 2 degrees Celsius to 5 degrees Celsius for five days. At 30 degrees Celsius, the vaccine will be valid for two hours.

Bangladesh is set to receive dilutor, which is necessary to dilute the frozen vaccine, from COVAX on Jun 7, according to the DGHS.

After completing the formalities, the directorate is hoping to begin the administration of the vaccine within seven to 10 days, said Dr Nazmul.   

It is the third vaccine Bangladesh is using in its inoculation drive against the coronavirus.

The country has administered around 10 million doses of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine.

A drive to administer over 1 million Sinopharm shots as gift from China is going on. 

Like the Oxford University-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine and the one developed by Chinese state pharmaceutical company Sinopharm, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine requires two shots with the second one to follow three to four weeks after the first.

The US drugmaker Pfizer developed the shot by using the messenger RNA or mRNA technology of German biotechnological firm BioNTech.

In December last year, the United Kingdom approved the emergency administration of Pfizer vaccine as the first country. The WHO approved the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use in December as well.

A handful of countries including the United States and Canada are carrying out inoculation by using this vaccine on people as young as 12 years old.