Bangladesh to vaccinate 80 percent population by 2022

Bangladesh will be able to vaccinate the targeted 80 percent 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.

The 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