Dhaka hospitals to administer Pfizer Covid vaccine from Monday

Bangladesh Desk:  Administering Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine will start in Dhaka from tomorrow, Dr Md Shamsul Haque, line director at the Directorate General of Health Services, said today.

The vaccine will be administered at three centres in Dhaka — Sheikh Russel Gastro Liver Institute and Hospital, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University and Kurmitola General Hospital.

A total of 120 people will be administered the vaccine tomorrow at each centre, Dr Haque said while briefing reporters today.

The first consignment of 1.06 lakh doses of the Pfizer vaccine arrived in Bangladesh as part of the global vaccine initiative COVAX on May 31.

Bangladesh on June 19 started administering Sinopharm vaccine doses across the country.

The vaccination started in Dhaka and elsewhere of the country with 11 lakh doses of Sinopharm vaccine that China sent Bangladesh as gifts, said the Directorate General of Health Services.

The vaccine doses are being administered at four hospitals in Dhaka district – Dhaka Medical College and Hospital, Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital, Sir Salimullah Medical College and Hospital, and Mughda Medical College and Hospital.

A consignment of 600,000 doses of China’s Sinopharm jabs arrived here on June 13, nine days after the arrival of the first batch of 500,000 doses as gift from Beijing.

However, the mass vaccination of Covid-19 is expected to resume in July as the government is making all-out efforts to collect vaccines, said principal secretary Ahmad Kaikaus.

‘The government has allocated Tk14,000 crore for the procurement of vaccines as it’s an all-out effort to ensure Covid jabs for all.’

The government has so far approved the emergency use of Oxford-AstraZeneca, Sinopharm (China), Sputnik-V (Russia), Pfizer-BioNTech (USA/Germany) and Crona Vac (China) vaccines.

About 1.5 million now await their 2nd dose of the vaccine while another 1.5 million people who registered on the vaccine database system did not get their 1st dose.

Bangladesh had so far inoculated a total of 10,082,705 people until June 20, according to the John Hopkins University statistics.

Covid-19 Vaccines Global Access, abbreviated as COVAX, is a worldwide initiative aimed at equitable access to Covid-19 vaccines directed by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, and the World Health Organisation.