Over 10m register for COVID vaccine in Bangladesh, 65% of them get at least one shot

More than 10.25 million people have signed up for coronavirus vaccines in Bangladesh and 65 percent of them have received at least one jab.

Launched on Jan 27, the registration on the Surokkha web platform for mass vaccination stopped on May 2 due to a shortage of vaccines following India’s ban on the export of the Oxford-AstraZeneca shots.

The registration reopened partially for students of medical colleges and universities in June.

Finally, the second round of registration for mass inoculation began on Jul 7 after Bangladesh received vaccines from other sources. In the 10 days since then, nearly 3 million people have registered on the Surokkha platform.

Bangladesh has so far received over 15.9 million doses of the vaccines developed by AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Sinopharm.

The government has administered 10.9 million shots, including around 4.3 million second doses.

In total, 6.6 million people have received at least one shot of the vaccines. The number is less than 4 percent of Bangladesh’s population.

Bangladesh is currently experiencing the worst phase of the pandemic with infections and deaths from COVID-19 rising at a record pace.

The government on Thursday revealed a plan to lower the minimum age for COVID-19 vaccine to 18 years as the confirmed caseload surged by 12,236 in a day to 1,071,774. The toll increased to 17,278 with 226 new deaths.