India is sending 20 lakh doses of Covid-19 vaccine to Bangladesh on Wednesday as a ‘friendship gesture’.
“This is part of India’s neighbourhood first policy and as a special neighbour, Bangladesh got that priority,” a senior official of the foreign ministry told Bangladesh Post, hours after Health Minister Zahid Maleque said that India would provide additional doses of Covid-19 vaccine to Bangladesh as a ‘gift’.
This is apart from Beximco pharma’s deal with the Serum Institute of India under which 3 crore vaccines would come from January 26 in six phases, 50 lakh in each consignment.
The government will also get 7crore more doses under the Covax mechanism of the WHO.
The Serum Institute has produced the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
“We’ll get 50 lakh doses of the vaccine in the first phase. Additionally, the Indian government will send some vaccines as a gift,” the health minister, earlier said at the meet the reporters event of the Dhaka Reporters’ Unity.
“We are also in talks with some other countries for vaccines,” he said, placating all the concerns related to Covid-19 vaccine.
The government earlier devised a plan to deploy vaccines across the country.
The health minister said 42,000 health workers are being made ready for the vaccination programme.
The vaccine will be given in hospitals and diagnostic centres and the government will bear the expense for treatment if there is any side effect, he said.
Some 300 centres will provide the vaccine in Dhaka.
Bangladesh first detected the cases on March 8 and recorded the first death on March 18. The government confirmed 528,329 cases so far. Of them, 7,922 patients died of the disease.
The health minister, however, said compared to developed countries such as the USA, UK, Germany and Italy, Bangladesh was doing better in curbing the spread of the novel coronavirus.
“We made wearing a mask mandatory here in Bangladesh under the slogan of 'no mask, no service',” he said, adding that this has worked well to control the virus spread.