2 million Sinopharm doses arrive in Dhaka soon

A total of two million more doses of the Sinopharm vaccine are expected to arrive in Dhaka from China early Tuesday, reports UNB.

The vaccine doses were scheduled to land at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on a flight of Biman Bangladesh Airlines at 2.30am, according to the health ministry.

On 16 August, Bangladesh, China and Incepta Vaccine Limited signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the coproduction of Sinopharm vaccine in Bangladesh.

Incepta, a leading pharmaceutical company of Bangladesh, will bring in bulk and bottling, labelling and finishing of the vaccine will be done locally, making the price relatively very cheap.

China has provided 2.1 million doses of Sinopharm vaccine as a gift to Bangladesh, 3.4 million doses under the COVAX facility, and 8 million doses as part of an arrangement of a large-scale commercial purchase so far.

Till now, 13.5 million Sinopharm vaccines have arrived from China. Of them, 1.1 million shots were received under the COVAX facility.

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

The government has administered at least 26,129,187 doses of Covid vaccines – enough to have vaccinated around 7.8 per cent of the country’s population, assuming every person needs two doses.

Bangladesh has administered 9,842,979 shots of Sinopharm as the first dose and 1,837,817 as the second dose so far.

Getting vaccinated prevents severe illness, hospitalisations, and death; and with the Delta variant; this is more urgent than ever, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.