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Serum sends 4.5m AstraZeneca doses as Bangladesh reaches milestone of 100m administered shots
The Serum Institute of India has sent 4.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine with Bangladesh reaching the milestone of 100 million COVID-19 shots administered since the beginning of the inoculation drive.
Published : 1 Dec 2021, 08:31 PM
Updated : 1 Dec 2021, 08:31 PM
The latest shipment that arrived by an Air India flight in Dhaka’s Shahjalal International Airport on Wednesday night has taken the number of doses received from Serum to 12.5 million under a deal to purchase 30 million shots.
The vaccines were taken to the warehouse of Beximco Pharmaceuticals, the sole supplier of the vaccine in Bangladesh, in Tongi, said Rabbur Reza, chief operating officer of the Bangladeshi company.
Serum sent 1 million doses of the Oxford University-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to Bangladesh on Oct 9, around seven and a half months after the Indian government imposed a ban on COVID vaccine export to inoculate its own population as infections exploded.
After India halted exports due to its own crisis, Bangladesh stopped administering the first doses to save second shots for the people who have had the first dose.
But Bangladesh was already short of enough doses to fully vaccinate all the citizens who have received the first dose.
More than 1.5 million people missed the second dose on scheduled dates. They were fully vaccinated after AstraZeneca vaccines arrived from Japan under the global sharing platform COVAX.
100M MILESTONE
The number of doses of the coronavirus vaccines, administered by the government in nearly 10 months after the immunisation drive had begun in February, has crossed the 100 million mark.
More than 62.7 million people took the first dose until Wednesday, according to the Directorate General of Health Services. Among them, over 37.2 million have received the second shot as well.
It means over 35 percent of the population have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccines while more than 22 percent got both doses.
The DGHS said over 72.5 million citizens have registered for the vaccines to date.
The government targets to inoculate nearly 140 million people against COVID-19 and for that it will need around 280 million doses.
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