Shawdesh Desk:

The government will start administering Pfizer and Sinopharm Covid-19 vaccine from June 19.

The Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) DG Dr ABM Khurshid Alam made the announcement while talking to reporters after visiting the Infectious Diseases Hospital (IDH) in the capital.

Earlier on Sunday afternoon, six lakh doses of the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine, gifted by China, arrived at Bangabandhu airbase in Dhaka’s Kurmitola area.

A consignment of 106,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine reached Dhaka on May 31. The government received the vaccine under the global vaccine-sharing initiative COVAX.

On May 12, Bangladesh received a gift of five lakh Sinopharm vaccine jabs from China. The government has already started administering those doses to healthcare students on a priority basis.

Bangladesh suspended administering the first dose of Covid vaccine on April 26 due to a depleting stock. The administration of the second dose was also suspended in many places due to the same reason.

Bangladesh had started mass inoculation against the novel coronavirus on February 7 with a target of vaccinating all its citizens aged 18 and above in phases.

The government suspended the vaccination registration process on May 5.

Bangladesh’s mass inoculation campaign stumbled after Serum Institute of India failed to ship Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

As per an agreement, Bangladesh was supposed to receive three crore shots of the vaccine in six months.

Serum delivered the first 50 lakh doses in January, but shipped only 20 lakh shots the following month. No shipment has been received by Bangladesh from the company since then.