The government is taking extensive measures to expand the nationwide vaccination drive against the Covid-19 in Bangladesh.
As part of the process, the age limit of taking Covid-19 vaccine will be lowered to 18 and the registration process will be eased at rural areas, Director General of Health Services Prof Khurshid Alam said on Friday.
He said the health minister has asked him to lower the age of eligibility of taking vaccine. “We will discuss it in our committee and see how it can be implemented.”
Health Minister Zahid Maleque last week announced to lower the age limit to 18 years from 30 years to bring young people under vaccination.
“We want to send our boys and girls back to schools and colleges soon. We have been administering the vaccine doses to the teachers. Now, we will bring under vaccination those who are at least 18 years old,” he had said.
The director general urged all to take the jab and said vaccines reduce the risk of developing critical conditions after infection.
“I talked with some critical patients at Mugda Medical College Hospital but they did not take the vaccine,” he said after emerging from the hospital.
“We will make the registration process of vaccines easy in rural areas so that people can take the vaccine easily,” he said.
Bangladesh was one of the first few countries in the world that could start an inoculation drive in the first week of February.
The vaccination drive started with the Serum Institute of India’s vaccine supply.
Now, the government has managed vaccines from different sources such as Sinopharm, Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.
Bangladesh is supposed to get 6.8 crore vaccine doses by this year under the Covax facility which is a WHO, Gavi-led initiative.
Registration for the COVID-19 vaccination began in Bangladesh in January. Initially, people who were 55 years old or older were eligible for vaccination.
The Directorate General of Health Services later lowered the vaccination age to 35 and then 30 years.
