100,000 Pfizer shots reach Dhaka

The first consignment of 106,000 doses of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine arrived in Dhaka Monday night under the global vaccine initiative Covax facility.

A regular flight of Emirates landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 11:10pm with the doses and Md Shamsul Haque, a line director at the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), received the jabs, Nasrin Akhter, a medical officer at the airport’s health centre, confirmed.

COVAX, the facility set up by the World Health Organization and several non-profits to deliver Covid-19 vaccines to developing nations, is working in partnership with Unicef, developed and developing country vaccine manufacturers, the World Bank, and others.

On 27 May, the Directorate General of Drug Administration (DGDA) approved the emergency use of the Pfizer vaccine.

So far four vaccines – Oxford-AstraZeneca (Covishield), Sputnik-V, Sinopharm, and Pfizer-BioNTech – have got emergency use authorisation in the country.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was the first coronavirus jab to show promising results in the latter stages of its testing process.

It is a new type called an mRNA vaccine that uses a tiny fragment of genetic code from the pandemic virus that enables the body to fight Covid-19 and build immunity.

The US Food and Drug Administration has authorised the storage of the Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at standard refrigerator temperatures for up to one month, to make the vaccine more widely available.