Bangladesh expects first shipment of COVID vaccine in Jan

The first batch of the COVID-19 vaccine prepared by Serum Institute of India is expected to arrive in Bangladesh in early January, said Health Minister Zahid Maleque.

“We have made an arrangement to bring the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine through Serum Institute. The government will bring in 30 million doses of the vaccine directly,” the minister said during the inauguration of a measles and rubella immunisation campaign on Thursday. “We hope to receive the vaccine doses in the first quarter of the next month.”

“WHO will also provide the vaccine for 20 percent of our population. It may take some time for those doses to arrive, but we’ll get them. Many other countries could not manage to get the vaccine yet.”

The vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University showed average efficacy of 70.4% in a pooled analysis of interim data from late stage trials, Oxford said on Tuesday.

Much anticipated study results, published in The Lancet medical journal, showed the candidate vaccine's efficacy was 62% for those given two full doses, and 90% in a sub-group of trial participants given a half then a full dose.

AstraZeneca Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot said the drugmaker had begun submitting data to regulatory authorities around the world to seek early approval of the shot.

IMMUNISATION

Health Minister Maleque inaugurated the measles and rubella immunisation programme in Dhaka by giving the shot to some children.

The immunisation programme will begin on Dec 12 across the country and continue until Jan 24. At least four million children aged between 9 months and 10 years will receive a single dose of the vaccine.

Immunisation will continue from 8 am to 3 pm on weekdays, according to the Expanded  Immunisation Programme of the Directorate General of  Health Services.

Due to the pandemic, the immunisation programme will not run out of schools but from community immunisation centres.