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COVID-19: Bangladesh to vaccinate 80 pc population by 2022

Just Earth News | @justearthnews | 30 Aug 2021

COVID-19: Bangladesh to vaccinate 80 pc population by 2022

Image: Pixabay

Dhaka/UNI: Bangladesh will be able to vaccinate the targeted 80 per cent of its over 160 million population by the next year.

The country is expecting the receipt of the required number of vaccines from various sources to help it launch an accelerated inoculation campaign.

Director General of Health Services (DGHS) Dr Abul Bashar Khurshid Alam told the official news agency BSS that Bangladesh has already reached or finalised deals with various sources to procure vaccines to inoculate 130 million people.

He said Bangladesh was set to purchase nearly 140 million doses of the vaccine by June next year.

Dr Abul Bashar said that under the agreements Bangladesh would get 30 million vaccine doses from China's Sinopharm, 10 million Sputnik V of Russia, 7 million Johnson & Johnson and 6.5 million from Pfizer of the US and three million AstraZeneca from Japan.

He said that currently around 5 lakh people are being vaccinated on a daily basis. Bangladesh now has the infrastructure to vaccinate 10 million people per month.

Bangladesh is also collecting a significant amount of vaccines under the COVAX facility of the WHO. So far, Bangladesh has collected 30 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine from various sources.

The country is expected to receive 10 lakh doses of Pfizer shots under the COVAX facility on Monday and 20 lakh doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine early on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, more than 18.28 million people have received the first dose of the vaccine and 7.84 million people have received both the doses of the vaccine till Sunday.