Health secretary Md Abdul Mannan on Monday said that Covid-19 vaccine, if discovered anywhere, will come to Bangladesh “first” and at “free of cost”.
He was speaking at a virtual meeting of the National Technical Advisory Committee on Covid-19 in Bangladesh.
The meeting took stock of the overall management issue of the pandemic.
According to a statement of the health ministry, the secretary told the meeting that many countries, including the United Kingdom and China, are on the verge of discovering the vaccine.
He conveyed to the meeting that those countries with a per capita income of less than $4,000 will get the vaccine for free.
“Since the per capita income of Bangladesh is close to $2000, this vaccine will be available for free in Bangladesh,” he said.
“The government has a plan to gradually distribute the vaccine to at least 80 percent of the people in the country. At the same time, the government will take appropriate steps for the process and distribution of vaccines,” he assured the experts of the technical committee.
The health secretary also assured them that there would be no shortage of testing kits.
He said currently the government has stocks of 300,000 testing kits and new kits are being imported every day.
“So, there is no crisis of coronavirus testing in the country. Definitely we will take steps to increase the capacity,” he said.
Three companies are now conducting the phase 3 trial with their potential Covid vaccines.
Bangladesh has allowed China’s Sinovac to conduct the trial in the country on healthcare workers.
AstraZeneca's vaccine, developed by researchers at the Oxford University, and China National Pharmaceutical Group (Sinopharm) are the only other candidates in the Phase 3 trials.
Moderna plans to start its third-phase trial by July.
