6 million doses in total to arrive in September
One million more doses of Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine under the Covax facility have reached Bangladesh.
The Pfizer vaccine doses, gifted by the US, arrived at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at around 5:30pm on Wednesday.
US Ambassador to Bangladesh Earl R Miller and Health Services Division Secretary Lokman Hossain Mia were present there to receive the shipment.
Earlier on July 10, Health Minister Zahid Maleque said Bangladesh would receive six million Pfizer jabs from the Covax facility. Five million doses would arrive in phases by September, he said.
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On May 31, Bangladesh received 106,000 Pfizer jabs from the US under the Covax scheme.
The health authorities later started administering the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at three centres in Dhaka on June 21.
The US said it is committed to leading the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic and will begin this summer the allocation of 500 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine it is providing to Gavi for distribution by Covax to countries around the world.
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US President Joe Biden reaffirmed this commitment by announcing that the US will donate 80 million doses of vaccines to support global needs.
Bangladesh currently administers four different vaccines for its inoculation campaign – AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Moderna, and Sinopharm.
As of Tuesday, around 18.48 million people have received the first Covid-19 jab, while some 8.04 million have received both doses.
The Covid-19 pandemic has claimed 26,274 lives and infected 1,503,680 people in Bangladesh so far.
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