Bangladesh receives another shipment of China's Sinopharm vaccine

Bangladesh's COVID-19 vaccine stocks have been replenished further with the arrival of another shipment from China ahead of the expansion of the immunisation campaign to villages and young people.

A Biman Bangladesh Airlines jet landed in Dhaka with 1 million doses of the Sinopharm vaccine on Thursday.

“These vaccines will be kept in Beximco's warehouse. From there, the vaccines will be sent to different districts and Upazilas based on demand,” said Dr Md Shamsul Haque, a line director of the health directorate.

The government has an agreement with the Chinese company to buy 30 million doses of the vaccine. The country is set to receive 2 million more doses of the Chinese vaccine in the early hours of Friday.

"Once the two other shipments arrive, we will have 7 million doses of the vaccine at our disposal. In addition, China is gifting 1.1 million doses which takes the total to 8.1 million.”

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 on Jul 1 after the government received consignments of Sinopharm, Pfizer-BioNTech, and Moderna vaccines from China and under COVAX.