Shawdesh Desk:

Health minister Zahid Maleque on Saturday said that Covid vaccination of students aged between 12 to 17 years would begin within the next 20 days.

The minister announced this at a meeting at Manikganj municipality office premises.

‘I had a conversation with the prime minister today in this regard. According to her decision, various activities will begin from the next week to vaccinate the children against Covid-19,’ said the minister.

The children will be inoculated with US-made Pfizer vaccine doses as it is suitable for them, he said adding that all arrangements have been made to collect the vaccine doses.

As schools and colleges have already been reopened bringing the children under vaccination coverage is necessary for their safety, he added.

The minister also said in the next campaign more than one crore people will get shots.

Already 2.5 crore people have received the shots with 1.5 crore inoculated with two doses, said Zahid Maleque.

‘We are trying to collect six crore more doses of Covid vaccines worth Tk 3500 crore from China and a deal has been signed with the World health Organization for collecting another 10 crore doses,’ said the minister.

So far, 14,390,957 people have been fully vaccinated in the country while 21,851,458 received the first dose.

On January 27, Prime Minister Hasina launched the Covid-19 vaccination programme at Kurmitola General Hospital through a videoconference.

The government rolled out a countrywide mass Covid-19 vaccination drive on February 7 vaccinating people aged 55 and above in the first phase.

On July 29, the government lowered the minimum age limit for taking Covid-19 jabs to 25 from 30 years in a bid to give a boost to the lagging vaccination rates in the country.

Earlier on July 19, the government lowered the age limit from 35 to 30 for vaccine registration.