The government has approached the United States for a share of the 60 million AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines that Washington announced to send to different countries, Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen has said.
The US has yet to respond to Bangladesh’s request, he told Dhaka Tribune on Wednesday evening.
On Monday, the Biden administration announced that the US stock of 60 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines developed by European pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca would be sent to other countries.
Later, President Joe Biden indicated that India would get some of the vaccines. But there were no words about which other countries would receive the vaccine doses.
Asked if Bangladesh would get some of the vaccines, an official of the US embassy in Dhaka told this correspondent: “We don’t have details on countries at this point.”
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Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony J Blinken said on Wednesday that his government was putting a plan regarding the distribution of the vaccine doses.
“Yes, we have approached the US government for a share of the 60 million vaccine doses. We haven’t yet gotten any response from them,” Foreign Minister Dr Momen said.
“We are hopeful that we will get a portion of the vaccine,” he said. “We didn’t specify any quantity.”
In an interview with CNN on Wednesday, US Secretary Blinken said: “We’re putting that plan in place as we speak. And you’re right; we’ll have 60 million vaccines [doses], the AstraZeneca vaccine. We want to make sure that the vaccines that we have in our possession or will soon have in our possession are safe, so the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is reviewing that.
“So we’re still a couple weeks away from that, but we’re putting in place a plan right now to do that,” he said.
Blinken further said: “So for the vaccines that we have directly on hand or will shortly, we’re going to decide whether to do some or all of that through Covax [the international vaccine facility] or how much of that will be done directly, country-to-country.
“All of that is in the works, and we’ll have a plan in place in the coming days,” he added.
