Health Minister Zahid Maleque has said that 20% of the country's people will be vaccinated by December this year under the Covax facilities.
"As per total population of Bangladesh, we will get Covid-19 vaccines for 40% population of the country under Covax facilities... WHO chief Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus agreed to send coronavirus jabs to Bangladesh for our 40% people in phases," he said.
The comments came when the health minister met with the director general (DG) of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland on Friday, an official release said on Saturday.
During the meeting, the WHO DG lauded Bangladesh's success to contain the spread of Covid-19 and he assured that WHO will extend all possible supports to Bangladesh to fight the disease, Maleque said.
"The WHO will provide technical support to Bangladesh for manufacturing Covid-19 vaccines," he said.
Also read - Health minister: No vaccine crisis in the country
Referring to the success of Bangladesh to inoculate the eligible population, the minister said: "Bangladesh held a massive vaccination campaign on September 28 to bring more people under inoculation coverage. On that day, over eight million people were vaccinated across the country."
According to the health ministry, the government has decided to purchase 165 million more Covid-19 vaccine doses from China and other countries to expedite the countrywide vaccination campaign.
Bangladesh set a target to vaccinate the country's 80% population by 2022 under an accelerated inoculation campaign, expecting receipt of required Covid-19 jabs within the estimated timeline, it added.
Bangladesh has so far approved eight Covid-19 vaccines. They are Moderna, Johnson & Johnson, CoronaVac, Pfizer, Covishield, Sputnik V, AstraZeneca and Sinopharm.
