Prime minister Sheikh Hasina on Wednesday told the parliament that the government has taken steps to procure over 10 million coronavirus vaccines every month, reports UNB.
"Steps have been taken to ensure more than 10 million vaccines every month," she said. Sheikh Hasina made the statement while answering a tabled question from ruling party MP Shahiduzzaman Sarker during PM's question-answer session.
Sheikh Hasina said as per the schedule, Bangladesh will receive 20 million doses each month from Sinopharma from next October. Until December some 60 million vaccines will come from Sinopharma, she said.
She also said that so far (30 August) over 18.02 million people got their first dose of vaccine while over 7.8 million got the second one. In total over 20.61 million vaccines have been inoculated.
The prime minister said that the government has established contacts with all vaccine manufacturing companies. "Of them we got response from Indian Serum Institute and booked 30 million doses with advance payment," she said.
She also mentioned that there was no response from other vaccine producing companies.
"Later, Sinopharma from China and Sputnik-V from Russia replied to our calls and we took initiative as soon as we got their responses. We have inked agreement with Sinopharma and also signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for local production," she said.