DGHS: Age limit for Covid-19 vaccination lowered to 30 years

Published at 01:56 pm July 19th, 2021

Undated file photo shows a person being vaccinated against Covid-19 at a centre in Dhaka Mehedi Hasan/Dhaka tribune

Bangladeshi citizens of 30 years of age and above can register for vaccination on the government’s ‘Surokkha’ platform

As the pandemic situation continues to spiral in Bangladesh, the government has decided to lower the minimum age limit for Covid-19 vaccination to 30 years.

The decision came during a meeting of the health authorities on Sunday, Prof Mizanur Rahman, director of the Management Information System (MIS) of the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), told Dhaka Tribune on Monday.

Surokkha, the government platform for Covid vaccine registration, is now open to 30-year-olds and above.
The meeting further decided to lower the age limit by five years every week until the age cut-off for vaccination drops to 18 years, Dr Rahman said.

However, sources at the DGHS’ Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI), which is in charge or rolling out the vaccination campaign, said the decision to lower the age limit every week was not confirmed yet, as it depends on the volume of registration for vaccination.

The move to lower age limit to 30 years comes only 14 days after the government set the cut-off to 35 years as its efforts to procure Covid-19 vaccine from different sources started to bear results.

Also Read - Bangladesh plans to lower age cut-off for Covid vaccines to 18 years

Bangladesh has received several consignments of Covid-19 vaccine doses from China’s Sinopharm and US’ Pfizer and Moderna – the latter two under the global Covax program – since May this year.

The nationwide vaccination campaign kicked off with Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine on February 7 this year, but was stalled in late April after the Serum Institute of India (SII), the AstraZeneca vaccine manufacturer supplying the shots to Bangladesh, stopped export when a disastrous second wave of the pandemic hit India.

Bangladesh then reached out to several Covid vaccine manufacturers across the world, including China, Russia and the US, to procure vaccine doses.

The latest consignment of vaccine shots – three million Moderna jabs from the US – arrived in Dhaka at 9:06pm on Monday. This lot also came under the Covax scheme.