COVAX offers Pfizer’s COVID vaccine to Bangladesh

The COVAX programme, led by the World Health Organisation and global alliance GAVI, has asked Bangladesh if the country is interested in the coronavirus vaccine developed by US drugmaker Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech.

Bangladesh has been asked to respond to a COVAX letter by Jan 18 to secure the vaccine, said ABM Khurshid Alam, director general of health services.

After the directorate informed Health Minister Zahid Maleque, Health Secretary Abdul Mannan, and other officials about the letter, it was initially decided that Bangladesh will go for the vaccine, Alam said. It also held a meeting with WHO officials in Bangladesh.

The letter, dated Jan 6, was sent to 192 countries that have joined the COVAX programme. The countries interested in the vaccine will get a limited quantity of the doses by the end of January or February.

COVAX will complete reviewing the countries’ responses by Jan 28 and inform them about its distribution plans the following day.

The countries’ regulators must also approve the vaccine in January before rolling out the doses by May.

Alam highlighted the challenges Bangladesh faces to store and transport the Pfizer vaccine, which has proved around 95 percent efficient in late-stage clinical trials.

The temperature required to store the vaccine is -70 degrees Celsius. In Bangladesh, only the Public Health Institute, IEDCR, and icddr,b have the refrigerators with such low temperature.

Citing the COVAX letter, he said Bangladesh will initially get as many doses as needed to immunise 0.4 percent of the population. But the volume of the batch has not been confirmed.

Considering the size of the vials for 3mm vaccine containing 10 doses, Bangladesh will initially be able to store the shots and give them to people only in Dhaka, the DG of health services said.

The government is trying to collect refrigerated trucks to transport the vaccines to others parts of the country, he said.

COVAX has also stipulated another condition that the batch of Pfizer vaccines must be given to the health workers on the frontline of the fight against COVID-19.

Alam said Bangladesh is agreeing to the condition, considering that the Oxford University-AstraZeneca COVID vaccine doses expected from the Serum Institute of India can be given to other priority groups.

Serum will provide Bangladesh with 30 million doses of the vaccine. Under the COVAX programme, Bangladesh expects 68 million doses to immunise 20 percent of the population.

GUARD AGAINST NEW VARIANTS

The COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE appears to protect against highly transmissible new variants of the coronavirus discovered in Britain and South Africa, a laboratory study suggests.

In blood samples from vaccine recipients, scientists found the vaccine appears effective against the so-called N501Y mutation of the spike protein on the virus, according to a report posted on Thursday on bioRxiv ahead of peer review. Pfizer scientist Phil Dormitzer said the vaccine has been tested against 16 mutations, and none have really had any significant impact. "That's the good news," he said, before adding a note of caution. "That doesn't mean that the 17th won't."

Ongoing testing will be needed, experts said, to allay concerns about whether the vaccines will be protective as the virus mutates. The vaccine is based on synthetic messenger RNA technology (mRNA), as is the one from Moderna Inc.

"The evidence is not conclusive but there is a lot to indicate that the existing mRNA vaccines do cover the new variants," said Andreas Bergthaler of the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. AstraZeneca Plc, Moderna and CureVac NV are also testing their shots against the fast-spreading coronavirus variants.

With additional details from Reuters