People of 25 years of age and above around Bangladesh will now be able to register for the Covid-19 vaccines as the government again has lowered the minimum age limit in a bid to give a boost to the country's vaccination rates.
Such citizens will be able to register through the Surokkha website from Thursday to take the vaccine.
A visit to the website, the government platform for Covid-19 vaccine registration, showed that the new age limit was already in place and is now open to 25-year-olds and above.
Earlier this month, the government had brought down the age limit from 35 to 30 for vaccine registration as the Covid-19 pandemic situation continues to spiral around the country.
That decision was taken at a meeting of the health authorities on July 18, which had also decided that the age limit will be lowered by five years every week until the age cut-off for vaccination drops to 18 years.
The move to lower the age limit to 30 years had come only 14 days after the government set the cut-off to 35 years as its efforts to procure the Covid-19 vaccine from different sources started to bear results.
A screenshot of the Surokkha website's Covid-19 vaccine registration section shows the new age limit
Bangladesh has received several consignments of Covid-19 vaccine doses from China’s Sinopharm and the US’ Pfizer and Moderna – the latter two under the global Covax program – since May this year.
The nationwide vaccination campaign had kicked off with the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine on February 7 this year.
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But the vaccination drive was stalled in late April after the Serum Institute of India (SII), the 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-19 vaccine manufacturers across the world, including China, Russia and the US, to procure vaccine doses.
The country has recorded 20,255 deaths from Covid-19 and a total caseload of 1,226,253 since March last year, as of Thursday morning.
More than 13,599,600 people across Bangladesh registered to get the vaccine until Wednesday afternoon.
Till the same time since January 27, over 5,820,000 people were administered the first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine and over 4,298,000 of them got both doses -- leaving a little over 1.52 million waiting for the second dose.
The government plans to start administering the second dose of this vaccine with the 245,000 doses received recently from Japan as a gift under the Covax facility -- while the wait for the expected vaccine doses from SII continues.
Meanwhile, 1,666,698 people received the first dose of the Sinopharm vaccine till Wednesday and 17,424 of them received both doses.
Also, 50,235 people have received the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine so far and 288 of them got both doses.
Some 481,715 people have also received the first dose of the Moderna vaccine till now.
Health Minister Zahid Maleque on July 15 said that everyone above 18 years of age will gradually be vaccinated in Bangladesh.
“Arrangements are being made to gradually bring all citizens above 18 years under the Covid-19 vaccination program in order to revive the country's education system,” he said.
