India’s gift of 20 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccine will reach Dhaka on Thursday, a day after the initial schedule.
“It’s due to procedural delay,” a director of the Directorate General of Health Services told Bangladesh Post.
"Bangladesh will receive 20 lakh doses of Oxford-Astrazenca Covid-19 vaccines (Covishield) from India as a gift on 21 January," the foreign ministry said in a statement.
"A special flight of India carrying the consignment will land at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka the day after tomorrow," it said on Tuesday.
Earlier on Monday, the health ministry officials said that India would send 20 lakh doses of Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to Bangladesh on Wednesday as a ‘friendship gesture’.
“This is part of India’s neighbourhood first policy and as a special neighbour, Bangladesh got that priority”.
This is apart from Beximco pharma’s deal with the Serum Institute of India under which 3 crore vaccines would come from January 26 in six phases, 50 lakh in each consignment.
The government will also get 7crore more doses under the Covax mechanism of the WHO.
The Serum Institute has produced the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for the low and middle-income countries.
“We are also in talks with some other countries for vaccines,” health minister Zahid Maleque said on Monday, placating all the concerns related to Covid-19 vaccine.
The government earlier devised a plan to deploy vaccines across the country.
The health minister said 42,000 health workers are being made ready for the vaccination programme.
The vaccine will be given in hospitals and diagnostic centres and the government will bear the expense for treatment if there is any side effect, he said.
Some 300 centres will provide the vaccine in Dhaka.
Bangladesh first detected the cases on March 8 and recorded the first death on March 18. The government confirmed 528,329 cases so far. Of them, 7,922 patients died of the disease.
The health minister, however, said compared to developed countries such as the USA, UK, Germany and Italy, Bangladesh was doing better in curbing the spread of the novel coronavirus.
“We made wearing a mask mandatory here in Bangladesh under the slogan of 'no mask, no service',” he had said, adding that this has worked well to control the virus spread.
