Bangladesh is lagging behind most of the countries belonging to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) in vaccinating people to protect from coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
Bangladesh has so far been able to provide the first shot of the vaccine only to 6.13 per 100 people, according to the latest update of Our World in Data research project at the Oxford University on Tuesday.
The performance of Bangladesh is slightly better than Pakistan and significantly better than Afghanistan. But, the nation of about 170 million people is underperforming as compared with the rest of the countries in the bloc – The Maldives, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
In terms of every 100 people, the Maldives, which has a population of about half a million, is leading the vaccination initiative by providing the first shot to 93.48 persons, followed by Bhutan, also a nation of small population, with 62.82.
India with about 1.3 billion people is the third having vaccinated 23.29 per 100 people, followed by Sri Lanka with 16.37, Nepal (11.46), Bangladesh (6.13), Pakistan (6.1) and Afghanistan (2.15).
The scenario in the region that has nearly one fifth of the world population is even grimmer when it comes to full vaccination according to the protocol. Apart from the Maldives, each country is struggling with the second dose to fully vaccinate its people. Bhutan, which has done well with the first jab, is yet to start with the second dose.
So far, about 23.2% of the world population has received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine – mostly in the developed world, including China. Significant portion of people in the developed world have already been fully vaccinated.
Three billion doses have been administered globally, and 41.2 million are now administered each day.
Only 0.9% of people in low-income countries have received at least one dose.
