Bangladesh received three million (30 lakh) doses of Sinopharm vaccine on Thursday night and early Friday as part of commercial purchase from China, reports UNB.
One of the three aircraft of Biman Bangladesh Airlines landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 10:20pm on Thursday.
Two more aircraft landed at 1:15am and 5.40am on Friday, each carrying one million (10 lakh) doses of Sinopharm vaccine, said Tahera Khondoker, deputy general manager (PR) at Biman Bangladesh Airlines.
Earlier, Bangladesh received two million (20 lakh) doses of Sinopharm vaccine on 17 and 18 July.
The vaccine doses were provided as part of a commercial agreement with China.
The highly transmissible Delta variant is now sweeping Bangladesh in an alarming way, taking the country’s death toll from the virus to over 20,000.
With all eyes on containing the pandemic, Bangladesh is now gearing up efforts to vaccinate its over 166 million population, with jabs being collected from various sources.
The country has also reimposed its Covid-19 lockdown for another two weeks until 5 August in an effort to stop the fast-spreading new variant of the virus.