Dhaka receives 5.4 million Sinopharm vaccines

Bangladesh received around 5.4 million doses of Sinopharm vaccine from China in the small hours of Saturday, reports news agency UNB.

A regular flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 12.44am with the vaccine consignment, Shahriar Sazzad, in-charge of the airport health camp.

"Md Shamsul Haque, a line director at the Directorate General of Health Services, received the consignment at the airport," he told the journalists.

Hualong Yan, deputy chief of mission at the Chinese embassy in Dhaka, said the consignment is actually part of the commercial purchase from China.

It is so far the second-largest batch of vaccine doses commercially purchased by Bangladesh from China.

"As a strategic partner of Bangladesh, China will always remain the most reliable supplier whatever and whenever the country needs," Hualong said.

According to the purchase agreement, China will supply more than 20 million doses of Sinopharm vaccine to Bangladesh commercially.

Bangladesh has already received 2.4 million doses of Sinopharm vaccine from China as bilateral assistance.

Meanwhile, prime minister Sheikh Hasina told the parliament that the government had made arrangements to get more than 10 million Covid-19 vaccines every month.

The prime minister further said that 20 million doses of vaccines will be available in the country every month from October. The number would increase to six million from December.

Earlier, on 16 August, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by Bangladesh, China and Incepta Vaccine Limited on the co-production of the Sinopharm vaccine in Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is now administering vaccines developed by four companies -- AstraZeneca, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Sinopharm.